The Ocean
by gschelt
Summary: ..."If I imagine you, body next to another." The helpless jealousy Alice feels over being the other woman may very well drive her mad. Based off The Ocean, by Tegan & Sara. Alice/Bella femslash. Now finished.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:** I'm excited about this story. I like how it begins and I really feel (hope) that I can keep this going and continue it and finish it. I wanted to write something that expressed the agonizing feeling of anxious, insecure jealousy. I hope my story does a good job of it. I really feel that the song, The Ocean by Tegan & Sara, does the job perfectly. That's why i wanted to use the song as a jumping off point. If you just listen to it (you have to, by the way), you can feel that insecurity and that irrational jealousy. I want to write about it very much, I've myself experienced what I'm putting Alice through in this story. It sucks. It makes for a marvelous, angsty story.  
Also, I have got to say that yes, I realize that my knowledge of canon is dismal. There are so many places where I'm probably off, but not only do I not know Twilight canon very well, the tweaks help my story. So just know that I know I'm misinformed.  
Any questions, feel free to message me.  
I own nothing._

* * *

**_Monday_**

It's like me to have my silent moments. It's like me to be mute, deep in thought. Ageless as we are, my family and I know the value of silence, of thought, of contemplation before speech; we have time for it, death not in our futures. A method that most humans don't feel they have the time to practice. Say, act, do, now, right now; they are impulsive creatures, these humans.

But when I'm lost in thought all weekend, no one bothers me. _(Perfectly understandable.)_

My introspection is no cause for grave concern. _(She'll come out of it when she's ready.)_

When my body language is a thundercloud, however, and my few words are exceedingly curt, I draw attention to myself. Riding in the backseat on the way to school on Monday, my arms are folded like a fence across my chest and I stare at my knees. _(Something must be wrong.)_

It's an Edward-like disposition to adopt; or Rosalie, perhaps. The cold side of their moodiness spectrum is often downright icy, but that's not me. No, I'm in a state of constant cheer no matter what. Grin and bear it, that's Alice.

But I can't.

Edward's pale bronze eyes sweep me up and down, silently concerned as the tires fly over the asphalt ribbon that runs among towering trees. The car darts in and out of mottled shadows; it's going to rain later this afternoon. It's quiet as Emmett drives, quiet like groggy humans just waking up and driving to school. It isn't that, though, since we don't sleep; the five of us are just lost in our thoughts. I don't have to be a mindreader like Edward to know that they are gently worried for me, curious as to why I'm so troubled. I lean into the door, eyes on the kaleidoscope of green whipping past the window, closed off from everything.

Daring them to try to engage me, defiant and impassive. This attitude is so very unlike me. As Edward watches me, his brow furrowed lightly, my muscles tighten under his gaze. Him of all people, I don't want it. I don't want to sit near him, I don't want to think of him, I don't want his curious pity. It only clenches my throat, and I am besieged by thought after thought after thought. He's like a brother to me; we share a name, even. I know him so well, but now he seems foreign to me. He's distant from me, from my own doing, from my own actions, and there's a sort of jealousy and anger I feel towards him that I never would feel if I still felt like I knew him. He has done nothing wrong, it's all been my own doing, mainly, but still I can't stand to look at him. _To think that he…_ My only blessing is that he can't read my mind. And that he can neither read Bella's…

…_If I imagine you, body next to another._

* * *

_  
**Sunday**_

It had kept me restless all night the previous night, these thoughts. We don't sleep, our kind, but nighttime is so peaceful that we tend to lie in solitude, wrapped up in quiet. Resting. But all night I couldn't sit still, I couldn't find anything like peace in the pitch darkness of my cold bedroom. In the cold darkness of my borderline-obsessive thoughts. (It wasn't like me to be this way…)

What was Bella doing now? Was she sleeping? Could she quiet her racing mind and rest, was she able to? I knew Edward and his tendency to visit her as she slept. I knew the way he would steal in through her window, kept unlocked for his entrance, and slip in bed beside her to cool her sleep. Wrap his pale arms around her and tighten. The picture flashed in and out of my head, and I nearly went mad hating myself for my inability to fall asleep and escape this.

I wondered if Edward was still in our house, or if he was blanketing Bella in her bed. My feet carried me to his bedroom in the east wing of the house, and I quietly pushed open his door.

"Yes?" his voice said from the shadows. He lounged his made bed, yellow gaze fixed on the ceiling.

"Nothing." An ineffable sort of relief filled me as I returned back down the hallway. He was here with me. Well, not really with me. The events of the past few days had distanced me terribly. Alone in his own bed, though, preferable to Bella's.

This sort of jealousy, this dark ugly feeling in me, it was so new. My family didn't know how to treat me. I didn't think about them, though. I thought of Bella, alone too in her bed. The temptation to fill that narrow void next to her flitted through my head and faded as quickly as it had come. Leave her in peace, Alice. Let her think.

It was so good to think of her warm and alone, sleepless with worry. Much better than Edward's velvet embrace upon her, driving my kiss from her mind.

I wondered, though, what or _who_ would be her first thought upon waking. I lied down back in my room and waited for sunrise.

_When you wake what is it that you think of most?_

_When your bed is empty do you really sleep alone?_

_If I imagine you, body next to another.  
_

_

* * *

_**_  
Monday_**

In the car I'm anywhere but where my body is. My mind is back on Sunday, pacing, back on Saturday, pacing, back on Friday, _arching_… It's not fair, the way I'm meant to worry this way. I know I have pieces of Bella, and for that I should be, _am_ grateful; the jigsaw puzzle pieces that are her friendship, her laugh, her secrets, her touch. But I can't grasp all of the pieces, not when they're not mine to collect. I can't solve this puzzle. Part of her belongs to Edward, half or perhaps more is a whole with him. And me? Sometimes I get to thinking that I'm nothing but a simple tryst, a mistake. Sometimes I get to thinking that I'm in love with her.

I don't know when it happened, but it did. We were never meant to be; each of us destined to be happy with a different vampire. Jasper and I eternally. Edward and she until she perishes. But somehow we became close friends, and that was good. Somehow I fell for her, and that was bad. Somehow it all came to a head, and now I can't shake the inevitable sensation of helpless spite.

We were never meant to be. This, I fear as I press against the car door, pretending to be alone, is a futile sort of affair that will only serve to slight me. The tires continue to peal along, and Edward sighs beside me; I think that I might envy him terribly, and try not to blame Bella.

* * *

_  
**Friday**_

It's surprising, hard to believe, that I hadn't had a premonition about this. Well… no, no perhaps I had seen it coming. Just not by way of the usual trance. It was more intuition, an inkling shivering its way up my skin in the past couple of slow, rainy weeks. The previous day, Thursday, it was like acting; going through motions, body knowing anticipation far before the head. Wednesday, carried back to Tuesday, Monday, was like thoughtful suffocation, linked to the unchaste curiosity that had been simmering for a week prior. _What if_ (unrealized, incoherent) _I'm in love?_

Skating delicately around this is another peculiarity, that of telling behavior. For example,

* * *

_  
**Thursday**_

"And _then _he said," Bella went on, "something pretty snide about Edward, and about the rest of you, probably, I don't know. I wasn't really listening."  
"Mike's just jealous," I said airily, digging my hands into the pockets of my jacket and smiling. We turned a corner of the school building together, stepping from damp grass to the slick sidewalk, headed for the parking lot.

"I think," Bella mused, looking up to the flat gray clouds, "_someone_ needs to teach him a lesson." She glanced sidelong at me.

"Hm?"

"Come on, Dracula," she chided, nudging me (the innocent contact was delightful), "be my bodyguard, would you? Use your superpowers to rip him a new asshole or something."

"Hostile, aren't we?" The corners of my mouth twitched as Bella giggled helplessly. I'd never had a friend like this, human or otherwise, who I could laugh like this with. Emmett was the closest to good-humored; the others tended to be touchy and somewhat dramatic. And this attitude permeated, causing us all to become sensitive about the subject of our _little problem_. Bella, however… She made it better, lighter, making remarks like that which would probably scandalize Rosalie. And, furthermore, Bella was a breath of fresh air. Being around her, it felt good. She was the best friend I'd had in a long, long time, the only human to know my family's secret, a wonder of a girl who didn't care. She made me feel happy.

She also made me feel… _strange_. It wasn't just the intoxicating smell of her blood that seemed to sharpen my senses and quicken my nonexistent heartbeat; though, admittedly, that must have been some part of it. I'd recently come to the realization that my best friend was beautiful. It had come as somewhat of a shock, the way it crept up on me. Like, one day I just went to school and noticed the way Bella's clear eyes sparkled when she laughed. So then I wanted to see her laugh more often, to be the one to make her light up like Aurora Borealis. So then I longed to be around her more often. So then her smile tended to title my thoughts. So then I began to dream of kissing that smile on her lips…

Looking back I can see that for exactly what it was, but at the time I didn't really recognize that I was falling for me best friend. Would I have tried to stop it? Perhaps, but the fact that she was a girl might have been the least of the reasons.

I loved a girl once. Years and years ago, I had already fallen in love with a girl; far before that kind of thing was even close to as accepted as it is today. She was from New York City and lived up the street from us in Grange, North Dakota. She was a restless kind of girl, full of energy and big plans and going absolutely stir crazy in the slow mining town we lived in. Her energy was contagious, invigorating me, the way she would go on for hours about her hero, Amelia Earhart, or the way she kissed me for the first time when we were in an abandoned mineshaft, exploring on another of her thrill-seeking adventures that she so often dragged me on. I fell in love with that girl… but six months later Pearl Harbor was bombed, and within a matter of weeks she was out of that town the first chance she got, and within a matter of months she was piloting a medicinal supply plane that was shot down over France.

Am I gay? Really, I prefer to avoid labels such as that. Applying to me, at least, they're rather unreliable and transparent. I let love happen to me; it's just a coincidence that of the three times it _has_ happened, twice it's been with girls.

But I couldn't have admitted that third one on Thursday, as it was not yet developed into a state of clarity. All I knew was that as Bella laughed, she put a hand over her mouth to try and stifle the sound, and that was just far too adorable. I could see why Edward loved her.

Then she did a curious thing. As we walked, as my laughter meshed with hers, Bella snaked her arm through the crook of my elbow and pulled us tighter. It was perfect, it was seamless, this action, and flowed just as smoothly as when best friends went arm in arm, or when boyfriend and girlfriend went arm in arm. It was a simple, harmless thing, this action, but it was unexpected; all I knew was that Bella was smiling shyly at her feet and that that was a peculiar but charming thing for her to do, for she had never had a coy moment like this with me. I smiled and squeezed her arm, not sure what to expect, and felt warmth from Bella's body blossom up the entire left side of my body.

* * *

_  
**Friday**_

That Thursday was the last of the strange, telling behavioral changes; unless of course I counted the peculiar, loaded glances that flickered between Bella and I in the silence of study hall. It was no longer just her looks or her smile that were causing my gut to clench; it was specific actions such as these. My subconscious wondered why and longed for her to secretly want me too.

"See you around eight then," Bella called as she climbed into her truck. Her cryptic smile gave me pause; I waved goodbye absently as she drove away, wishing I could read her. Now I knew how Edward felt… I found myself identifying with him so much more lately. But I waved that comparison away. Even more prevalent than the fact that I was skirting thoughts of my feelings for Bella was the fact that I was skirting thoughts of Edward… Bella's _boyfriend_. My brother. He definitely did not bear thinking about; I don't know how I could have even handled bringing him into the mix.

I was looking forward to that night; Friday night spent with my best friend, curled up in her room watching movies. Like normal teenagers. Back home, Edward read my body language and, grinning in fond amusement, asked if I was looking forward to the night ahead. He was happy for my good relationship with his girlfriend, for _my_ happiness, for my enthusiasm for this simple pleasure that was a human-like girls' night. He wasn't going to be jealous, even having no real chances to enjoy himself and be normal besides Bella. She alone was enough for him as, I suppose, she was for me. I smiled vaguely, distractedly, and affirmed.

I took the Jeep to Bella's and after I parked I walked up to her porch and rang the bell. Though I felt far less comfortable being shown in by Charlie (both of us smiling shyly and unable to think of any small talk) than I would have if I had scaled the roof and crept in Bella's window, the normalcy felt… nice. I was a regular teenage girl who used the front door and awkwardly greeted my friend's dad. I wasn't Edward. Though I did have to admit that there was something about the intrigue of sneaking into Bella's room that tugged at me. I cleared my throat as I ascended the dark stairwell to shake the thought; it was odd, thinking about creeping into my best friend's bedroom. What a strange, nocturnal, licentious thing to do. Vampiristic. Sexual. It was hard to know which adjective made my skin crawl more.

One chick flick later, Bella and I were in the middle of a violent slasher film. She would _thoughtfully_ cover my eyes when the machete flashed and blood spurted, all the while screaming and jumping in delighted terror at all the right places and squeezing my arm with her other hand. We were sunk low under the quilt and holding our breath as the movie's suspenseful climax simmered.

"I can't watch," Bella murmured, her face buried in my shoulder.

"Her flashlight won't work," I narrated in a low voice, whispering in her ear. She squirmed, burrowing further into the safety of my shoulder with her hands in a death grip on my arm.

"She is so dead!" I heard Bella exclaim in a muffled voice. Her ragged breathing permeated my sweater and steamed on my skin, and I closed my eyes for a moment since she couldn't see my face. I drank in the sensory overload of her proximity, of her irresistible scent… But it had to be resistible, no way on earth I could give in to my instincts and drain her of every last drop. And it struck me again that I was so very much like Edward. Yes, I and the rest of my family had to deal with temptation of the carnivorous nature often, but I found myself assuming a burden of temptation that I hadn't felt this strongly in years. This was it, this was Edward's pull, deep in the pit of his stomach, that I knew now influenced the both of us like a rudder. But I was sick of thinking about him, of realizing our similarities that really only seemed to surface when it came to Bella… and why was that? Why was this a problem at all? Could it be hardly credible that there was anything else about Bella to resist than just her blood? The foggy notion of attraction was just barely taking shape in my gut as Bella clung to me in the dark, under the muted glow of the TV screen.

It was near the end of the film, the action speeding up to extreme suspense and gore, but somehow it seemed Bella and I were tuned out. We lay side by side, eyes glued to the screen and heads together, but, strangest of all, there was an air of distraction. It was as though we lay there, pressed intimately close, and we were acutely aware of our bodies. Something buzzed in me; in informal premonition, one could say. An inkling of the present, not the future, but all the while intuitive. A premonition that right now, at this second… that Bella's hair tumbled over my left shoulder and smelled so good. That she yawned, a perfectly natural (and endearing) movement, and I realized with a jolt that I hadn't yawned in decades and had never even noticed. That our fingers were brushing under the quilt. She was gazing at the TV screen, but ever neuron seemed to draw towards me. She wasn't seeing what she was looking at, her mind was on me… There was no way to even know this. My imagination extrapolated from her apparent preoccupation with her thoughts. Still, the possibility gave me a strange thrill.

Bella turned her head and looked me in the eyes. "You know," she said quietly, "I can never seem to get over it, the way Edward sticks around me. Even though it puts him through hell having to exercise such will power and concentration like he does, you know?"

I nodded, inwardly kicking myself for having nothing to say. But I couldn't very well tell her that Edward wasn't the only one.

She looked down and bit her lip. "It's just on my mind all the time. I mean, what a sacrifice for him. I can't imagine what that's like."

"It certainly isn't easy," I said after a slight pause. "But for you, the sacrifice he makes is worthwhile. Yeah, it's a struggle for him to be around you, but you're worth it." I loathed talking about him now.

"What's it…" Bella paused, staring at the window and collecting her thoughts. "What's it like?" She turned back to me.

It was my turn to look away. I stared at the carpet, chewing my lip and trying to think, and channeled my own feelings. "You're prey," I began bluntly. "And you smell fantastic. You know this, Edward's explained it all to you; the temptation of the whole thing. But, I don't know, how can I explain this…" I trailed off, looking up to the ceiling for inspiration and blowing my hair out of my eyes. "It's like… It's like when you have a cavity. You know you shouldn't test it, you shouldn't suck air over that crack because it's going to hurt so bad, but for some reason you just compulsively want to, _have_ to so bad. But you've got to focus every muscle to ignore it, even though that means you're thinking about it every second and consciously neglecting it; and that makes time go so slow. You want to test the pressure of that cavity so bad to make sure it still hurts, and you know it will, and you know that you shouldn't, but you can't make those desires go away." I finished my winded explanation and looked over at Bella, searching for understanding in her deep brown eyes. She gazed at me for a second, processing. "That's the closest I can get to what it's like," I added sheepishly.

"So I'm…" Bella said slowly. "I'm a cavity?" She raised an eyebrow at me.

I smiled. "You get cavities from eating a lot of sweets. Which you are."

Bella blushed and looked down, snuggling closer to me. She looked down at the crook of my elbow thoughtfully, turning over what I'd said in her mind.

"Have you ever been in love with a human, Alice?" she asked softly, toying with a corner of the quilt. That question must have arose as she thought about how deep my insight was, as she must have caught the shadow of experience in my words.

I gazed over at Bella's window. How much that window must know. It's seen inhuman creatures creep into a sleeping girl's bedroom. It's seen secret rendezvous carried out in the hushed silence of the night. It's seen warm embraces, cold embraces, baited breath, sentinels watching from the rocking chair as Sleeping Beauty lies. I wondered what it was seeing now, I wondered where this particular moment fit in the story that it was piecing together. I wanted to lie to Bella, to cut this wonderful stillness in the air that was an extension of her eyes meeting mine and her pulse washing over my body. I wanted to leave this subpar to Edward's moments of vulnerability with her, to keep it less vivid and less meaningful. That was only fair, after all; I'm only Alice. I'm not her knight, I shouldn't make her feel so at ease that she slips her warm, slightly sweating hand in mine. But she did.

"Yes," I said simply, softly raking my fingernails across the palm of Bella's hand.

"Oh," she murmured. "Yeah, I thought you might have, the way you knew so well how to express that feeling."

A pause in which my breath stayed suspended in some stinging chamber of my lungs, in which I thought back to a girl with dreams bigger than the sky she wanted to fly, in which I thought back to a girl who had stirred me like the heartbeat I thought I had lost forever.

"Will you tell me about them?" Bella asked, almost in a whisper, as she gazed up at me.

"Well," I said hoarsely, unsticking my tongue from the roof of my mouth, "The first was more than sixty years ago. We went to the same high school, and she was…" I forced down a lump in my throat. "She was incredible." Once more forced the lump back, and continued. "She joined up to help during the war and was killed in '42."

Bella turned her body more towards me and squeezed my hand. There was nothing more she needed to say than that, just the simple pressure of her fingers intertwined in mine and her compassionate eyes looking up at me.

"And the second?"

In that terrible moment I had absolutely no words, and I was hit by a moment of clarity so awfully real and naked that there was nothing more I could do than look into her eyes. That was it, everything I ever had to say, crumpled and heaped into my pupils, and I could not for the life of me do anything else. I just looked with terrible yearning guilt etched all over me, and there could have been nothing more telling.

Bella's lips parted and she gulped, pained understanding dawning across her face. And then she surprised me, confirmed my crude premonitions, destroyed something in me that knew life made _sense_. She leaned over me, silky hair tumbling across my neck, and kissed me. She kissed me in a way that led me to believe that she knew she wanted this, that crushed any of my sense of order. She kissed me in a way that led me to believe that she wanted this, that she had wanted this for days or maybe weeks. Her kiss, a mesh of lips and twenty fingers beginning to delicately trail on skin, communicated want and solemnity and repressed guilt. And I opened my mouth to her, feeling her tongue enter and embody the entrance of her persona into my consciousness, where I thought that yes, I _had_ been falling for this girl and now I had hit the ground.

The marvelous improbability of me lying side by side with Bella on her bed, kissing her with our bodies pressed against one another's and with the intention of never stopping, fueled me. It was delicious, dark, slow, packed with the wants and the emotions that Bella and I had either never vocalized or never realized. She breathed into my mouth, a sort of impatient, helplessly rapturous sound. And again I was struck by how beautiful she was, even when my eyes were closed. She was just _so_ breathtaking. And breathtaking also was the way she pressed close, the way her warm skin felt against my cold. The way she muttered that I was beautiful as she kissed her way down my neck and I whispered her name.

She told me to tell her to stop if at any time I felt overwhelmed by her tantalizing scent, warmth, human essence. But I felt more clear as my lips pressed against her abdomen than ever. She said okay and pulled off my shirt. The credits began to crawl up the TV screen.

* * *

_  
**Monday**_

The car pulls into the parking lot and the ride is concluded, having passed in complete silence. As we ease into a parking spot, I glance at my familiar surroundings out the window and catch a chance glimpse of a certain beat-up pickup truck a few yards away. Another unorthodox premonition evolves in me, and this one makes me sick to my stomach (the only signal for this omen). I try not to think about what Bella had said to me after we… after we _fell into_ each other. As I had all weekend, turning my natural sleeplessness into pure, bloodshot insomnia. I also try not to think of Edward, the cold form next to me unbuckling his seatbelt, how he had been wronged and betrayed and how he had ruined _everything_. As I had for an indeterminate period of time. I couldn't bear to look at him.

… _If I imagine you, body next to another.  
_

_

* * *

_

_**A/N:** Don't worry, you'll find out what happened immediately after Bella and Alice "hooked up" in the next chapter. It's kind of important, after all.  
Reviews are nice. :)_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note**: Why on earth did this end up so long? Wow. Well, this is an odd chapter for me. Some parts I like, some parts I feel are too much or maybe not enough. My Bella ended up very introspective; she does a lot of thinking. That means lots of big paragraphs. Bella was strange to write for me, I have never been able to get inside her head. Her character has always perplexed me and I don't know why, she's such a simple girl. Probably because I just don't get her. Canon Bella, I honestly don't like her. So I tried to understand her as best I could and this is what I ended up with. Too angsty for you, this chapter? I might just have to agree.. but then again, that's the whole story. Anyway, I hope you like it. Don't hesitate to review :)  
_

* * *

**_Monday_**

Charlie doesn't ask any questions. I doubt he would have if I had come downstairs, sat at the table, and ate my cereal sobbing. No, even then he wouldn't ask if there was something wrong. He wouldn't pry. For that, I think, I am grateful.

"Good morning," he says simply from around the rim of his mug of coffee. He sets it down and gulps, turning a page of the paper, as I heave my backpack on the table to stuff in a scarf and zip it back up. His gaze lingers over the dark circles under my eyes, the hurried exhaustion of my movements, as I push the chair back in and run my fingers through my hair, sighing. But he doesn't pry.

"Bye," I call over my shoulder distractedly as I walk out the door. When I pull the door of my truck closed, I slam it. When I try to put the key in the ignition, it jitters in my unsteady hand and refuses to find its niche. "Fuck," I seethe as I try to fit it in, cursing more out of necessity for something to say than real frustration. No, perhaps it is frustration. But not at the key. When the truck roars to life, I sit back in defeat, closing my eyes and breathing deep. Charlie emerges from the front door, locking it behind him, and frowns at me in concern as he crosses to his cruiser.

Wondering what that Cullen boy has done to me, no doubt.

I busy myself with sitting up in my seat, coughing, and backing out of the driveway in a hurry.

I _am_ grateful that Charlie doesn't pry, in a selfish and juvenile sort of way, so that I don't have to deal with divulging any of my personal affairs to my dad. Very teen-age of me. Then again, a small part of me knows I have no one to talk to. And that drains me. My only real friends, my only real confidants… I can confide in neither of them. I certainly can't talk to Edward about what's burdening me. And I can't go to Alice with this. I've lost both of them to this problem.

_This problem…_ It really is a problem, isn't it? It's thrown me from both of my best friends, it's distanced me from Charlie, it's torn me in half. All this, and it's only been two and a half days. Roughly sixty hours, and I've so quickly become a mess. It turns me sour with sadness that this has to be a problem at all in the first place, that it has to be such a worrying, sleepless thing. Then I think of what Alice must be feeling and my heart sinks.

* * *

**_  
Saturday_**

It seems like I spend all of my spare time in my room, locked in there like Rapunzel. Always spending the dwindling hours outside of school reading or studying or dreaming of being rescued. But it was not quite so developed as that, as I would just stare out the window at the intimate dark green and indigo landscape of tall trees and before I knew it there was a creature at my window there to rescue me. I would sit on my quilt, partitioned from Charlie and the whole house, and ponder the fact that it wasn't a beautiful prince who rescued me from a monster. It was a beautiful monster who rescued me from solitude.

He'd knocked on my door earlier that night; Charlie, that is. The prince, gallantly knocking and poking his head round the door, not the dragon slipping in through my window.

"Hey Bells," he said carefully, his brow furrowed in mild concern. "Are you hungry at all?"

I toyed with a hole in the quilt. "No thanks," I said rather vacantly. "You can go ahead without me, I'll be doing my homework."

He hesitated, studying me carefully. Charlie wasn't stupid; he could see my listlessness and my troubled eyes and figure out that something was bothering me. But he wasn't the prying type. He trusted me to sort out my own problems and not do anything stupid or desperate. Nodding, he withdrew his head and shut the door, leaving me alone. After he left, I closed my eyes and exhaled. I couldn't settle, I couldn't calm, I couldn't untangle the knotted mess of my thoughts.

A noise, light as a whisper and soft as the chill of déjà vu skittering up my spine, sounded just outside my window. For one dreamlike moment, I imagined it was the crooked claws of some creature about to unfasten the latch and slither inside. But no, the wind blew gently through the slight opening and teased me. It wasn't a monster, of course.

"Hi Edward," I whispered to the empty room before his silhouette even appeared and began to slid the window open.

He slipped inside, fluidly, and I repeated myself as he crossed over to me and touched two pale fingers to my cheek. He smiled that charming, crooked smile of his as he murmured his greeting, happy to see me after only one day.

I dropped onto the bed and consciously forced myself not to cross my arms. "It's late," I said simply, my mouth dry and sticky. I could think of nothing else to say, not quite as happy to see him as I'd hoped I'd be. Of course, it would have been foolish of me to think that I would actually crave to see him, not after the night before. After that, now I couldn't look at him the same way. I felt sorry and I felt distant.

"You sound surprised." Edward leaned against my bedpost, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. "Anyway," he went on, "I couldn't be with you last night, as Alice had taken my place beside you. I missed you." He sat down beside me.

I prayed that he wouldn't notice my heightened breathing at the sound of Alice's name. I also thanked God he couldn't hear my thoughts.

"How is Alice?" I began carefully. "She didn't seem well when she left this morning."

"She's alright," he said halfheartedly, not before pausing for a moment. "Listless, I'd say, and that's unusual for her. But I'm sure it's nothing serious."

I swung my feet as I stared at the carpet, longing to ask more. But that wasn't necessary, as even besides not wanting to draw attention to unnaturally excessive concern, I knew anyway what the answer would be. Really, I knew; a small pocket of dread in my stomach like a peach pit, that knew she was hurt.

"Any idea what might be wrong?" I couldn't bite the words back. Of course I knew what was wrong, but I craved some kind of clue as to how she was taking it.

"No," Edward replied. "I don't know. She won't talk to me. She's not really social with anyone, so far, just sort of brooding."

"Oh." Another loss for more engaging words. I wanted to kick myself for being so uninteresting.

It was just as I feared. From what Edward told me, it sounded like Alice was hurt. _All my fault._ A wave of miserable reproach throbbed through my nervous system, and I wished that this wrong could be righted. I wished that she weren't so unwell; not over me, it wasn't worth it. I thought about the words she'd whispered to me, when she used the guise of Edward's opinion to say that I was worth the struggle against bloodlust. Would she say the same thing now, would she say that I was worth a different torment? Not that of bloodlust, but another fractured and frayed lust altogether? A lust for answers, I would guess, or more accurately a lust for answers different from those that I had given her. My head pounded once, just one single anvil strike like a punctuation headache, and it was for all intents and purposes a pang of regret. Regret over what, I could not say. Regret over having hurt Edward, of course. I could hardly look him in the eye. Perhaps even stronger, though, was regret over having hurt Alice. At least Edward was blanketed in blissful ignorance.

"Edward," I sighed, rubbing my arm. "Maybe you'd better go home."

He frowned and his delicate lips pursed. I longed to kiss them, just to remember what they were like, but I couldn't do it. Not in real life, tonight that scenario was meant only for my imprecise wants. Funny, how familiar those pale lips were to me, since he was after all my boyfriend. But rediscovering them seemed only a dream to me now. Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day…

"Why?" he asked, confused. "What's wrong?"

"Not tonight," I stammered, like that was supposed to explain anything.

"But-"

"Please, Edward. Just go, I'm tired."

He got up and walked towards the window, then he twisted his torso and shot me a look of frustrated confusion. "What's going on with you?"

"I don't know," I said, looking up at the ceiling. When I kept my eyes averted from him for several prolonged seconds, Edward turned back around and wordlessly climbed back the way from which he came.

_Stop crying in the ocean,_

_stop crying over me._

_Stop worrying over nothing,_

_stop worrying over me.  
_

_

* * *

_

**_  
Sunday_**

All I knew was that something was terribly wrong, a sort of gauzy tearing apart like my conscious was a thin bandage to be torn through easily as cotton candy. Or maybe it was my conscience. That, I knew, was under attack too. Under attack from the terribly wrong thing, the thing that made me want to break or rip something _(thin bandage)_ from helpless frustration that such a terribly good thing had to end up such a perfectly wrong thing.

For wasn't it good, wasn't it beautiful, to be in love?

But _was_ it even love? I loathed the affixation of a term to the feeling, as that was like tranquilizing a wild creature to put it in a zoo. Something volatile, something wondrous about it, lost forever in caging it up to be safe and be sure. And I knew a lot about wild creatures as of lately. They were my second family. But calling it love was tainting it. Cynical of me, jaded really, to have such an attitude; to think that my pure emotion would be spoiled by attaching it to an often transparent term given to something false. I saw it with other teenagers often. They said they loved each other; they kissed often and publicly, they looked over one another's shoulders at passing strangers, they decided they wanted to crumple the "love" and discard it when it came time for college and time to move on.

But it wasn't that, not at all. I refused to lump my feeling into that category; rather, I held it close, cradled it, kept it still and private and warm.

And I kept it private and was ashamed of it ever being discovered.

This, intrinsically, was the reason why I lay so wretchedly on my bed. There was guilt, pound after pound after suffocating pound of it. Guilt over what I'd done, guilt over what I'd felt, guilt over what I still felt, guilt over what I still wanted to do _again_ and _again_. Because I knew that I wanted to commit that crime again, and I knew how awful, how awfully wonderful I would feel. Just as awful and torn as I felt now, only probably worse. Worse for backsliding further down that slippery slope. Or perhaps even better, for having once again committed that beautiful crime that was like drinking sunlight, flooding me throughout with warm yellow radiance.

But then it would be back to guilt, guilt over my lies. Guilt over my greediness. Guilt over the way I had to treat the whole thing like a terrible, shameful secret. It was, though, it was just that; but it was so lovely and perfect that its villainy was tragic.

I closed my eyes and willed my rushing, swirling thoughts to stop. I had done something bad. I felt terrible and conflicted. I wanted to do it again.

* * *

**_  
Thursday_**

Something clicked. For days and days the pieces were grinding together, struggling discordantly, and then they suddenly fell into place. A petite-mal epiphany, if you will. Simple, clean realization. Like a telegram. All of the odd sensations abruptly made sense, they were unmasked. Why was it that I wasn't tripping so much, wasn't dropping so much, wasn't breaking so much? Why was it that such a calm settled in me, yet blended with a tinge of some thrill, when I was with my best friend?

I had a _thing_ for her.

I did. There was no other way to put it, all other phrasings would seem off in some way. I liked her? Too juvenile. I loved her? Too heavy. I wanted her? Too physical, too one-dimensional. I had a strange thing for Alice. It was different and it took a tremendous amount of getting used to.

I only had Edward to compare this to, my experience with falling for him. Before him, there was no one else. But compared to being with him, they may as well have been two completely different sensations, they were so different. Similarities? Well, the obvious; the whole vampire thing (damn it, was undead my _type_?). Another similarity, my indecisiveness. It wasn't easy to commit to my feelings for either one; there was always some obstacle that made it a difficult choice to embrace (though, one rarely chooses who one falls for). With Edward, there had been that newness of his being a vampire. Learning to love and trust someone I wasn't supposed to, someone who could kill me. That was something I had learned to accept though. But then, there were the other factors concerning Alice: much more common concerns that other humans could relate too. I had feelings for her, and I already had a boyfriend. I had feelings for her, and she was my boyfriend's sister. I had feelings for her, and she was a _girl_. Yes, there were definitely hurdles everywhere.

The differences were numerous, though. Where Edward was tender, tender in a slow, solemn, protective way, Alice was tender on my level. It was hard to put my finger on it; she was closer to my height, easier to understand, more responsive. When she seemed that she had me figured out, I could figure her out too. And then we could be mysteries to each other, but not in the way that Edward and I often battled to know one another's thoughts. Alice and I seemed to guess and grasp at each other sometimes, when we couldn't understand each other, but this, I suppose, was partly in learning hidden quirks and behavioral tics. And it was appreciated; refreshing, in a way.

This was really something I couldn't put my finger on, and I strained myself in trying to elucidate it for myself. But, mainly, it seemed I felt I was more myself around Alice. Pinpointing that was a stretch.

With Edward, it was almost as though I was always holding my breath wondering what he was going to say or do. Was it going to shock me, thrill me, calm me, belittle me? He would never do it on purpose, make me feel small or silly, but sometimes he said things that made me feel sorry that I couldn't be better for him. He didn't say anything that indicated he wanted someone better or thought I wasn't good enough, but sometimes I would be left at a loss because he's so perfect and I'm just a silly human girl with so many shortcomings.

Alice, though… If Edward was the corset, Alice was the loosening of the laces. She was like equilibrium, she was like treading water, she was like wind, like a cold front just blowing me along, blowing and breezing me to her. She was like… I could spin metaphor after metaphor to get it right, but at the end of the day I could not for the life of me describe just how calm and right she made me feel.

Then not only was there the way she made me feel, there was the way that she _was_. Get me started (introspectively, not verbally, never in the deepest stretch of the imagination _could_ I find a venue to express this verbally, it wasn't an option), and it was hard to get me to stop. I was a runaway train, really, when I got to thinking about Alice. She was just so… she was something else entirely. Beautiful, lively, captivating… I could go on and on and on.

Some of these totally different aspects to Alice that Edward didn't possess had to do with the fact that she's a girl. Some of the things I liked most about Alice, some of the things that made me drawn to her as a friend and tentatively drawn to her as more of the friend, were threads of her female identity. And that confused me. It would be naive to think that I could develop feelings for a member of the same sex and plow ahead utterly nonplussed. It was a twist in the road, naturally, and I readily confronted the perplexity. I wasn't going to act like this wasn't throwing me, because it _was_, but neither was I going to let it rattle me too drastically.

It was worth a lot of thought.

Gay? Me? I didn't think so. I said this not by method of denial, but rather as an end result of lots of objective introspection. But then I went further, and realized that I had never been in love before Forks. I had never been in love before I met these vampires, and the emotion was split even between a boy and a girl. Bisexual? Me? I wasn't sure. I had little to no experience to size myself up from, before Forks, and the self-discernment process grew murky. But then, then I tired of the struggle. So I had feelings for a girl. It may very well have been a big deal, I still wasn't ruling that out, but I didn't want to think about all the ways that this wasn't exactly normal. I just wanted to ride this out and see where it went. _Ride it out_. I bit my tongue and narrowed my eyes at the burst of flavor in my mind, the burst as it dropped into the gutter. Ride it out, there was definitely _something_ I wanted to ri-

"What are you thinking about?"

My gaze lifted to Alice, tugged back from my thoughts. She looked at me curiously.

"Nothing." It was a wonder how far my mind had wandered in the short span of time after we had left off on the topic of Mike. Half a minute? A whole minute? I didn't know. All I knew was that I must have had it _bad_ for my mind to dive so completely into thoughts of Alice in no time at all. Did I have it bad?

Sure.

I couldn't help myself from taking Alice's arm in mine. It was a snap decision, no, not a decision at all. It was just action, it was just perfect. I hugged her close, and as we melded together like best friends, like a perfect fit, I knew this was why I liked her so much. It was because we were a perfect fit. I felt her smile radiate through the length of her body pressed to mine, and I swallowed. This was a perfect fit.

* * *

**_  
Friday_**

I couldn't for the life of me concentrate on the movie. I lay beside Alice, self-conscious of every slightest shift in my body, feeling that every movement was that of tectonic plates, like an earthquake. It was torture. It was dark, delicious, unbearable, glorious torture. I snuck sideways glances; Alice looked ahead, down her delicate nose as her fingers clasped together like a zipper, resting easily on her stomach.. Her proud, elfin features, perfectly white, were like a canvas for the glow of the TV to paint on, I observed curiously. As the characters crept through a forest, her face was painted gray from the scene's dark green pines. And when blood flashed across the screen, her face was splashed in muted red.

It was strange, disconcerting, to see something so like blood on Alice, even if it was only pale red light. This was, however, the dash of color that was meant for her skin. A predator, by nature, she was made for that crimson spray at the climax of a kill. I tried to picture her untamed, I tried to picture her fierce and feral but in my imagination only flickers would come. It was a relief that she was there next to me, real and still instead, but the eerie sensation lingered. I huddled closer to her, good to feel her soft body pressing mine.

But still, like a bad dream, all I could think about was blood. Blood pumping through me, blood spitting through a mouth in my veins, Alice's refined features awash in my blood (slicking her pointed eyebrows just above those once-amber eyes misted red with lust, flecking her white skin with one drop suspended from the tip of her nose, tracing those lips like liquid whiplash…). For the first time in months, and at this time sharper and more real in its surreality, I felt afraid. More afraid now, lying perfectly balanced and secure in the dark and thinking of a nightmare, than I had when I first learned the danger of real monsters that existed. Afraid of how easy it would be to kill me, how easily the life would flood from me, how she could decide to let loose and free and volatile whenever she felt like it and just end. my. life. Was I afraid of her, of Alice? Somehow yes, but somehow no because she was right there next to me. She was here, she would protect me. _From what, from herself? From her second self? Or was it really her first self?_

I wondered if Alice ever had nightmares like this, if she ever played through numb horror stories in her mind of ripping my throat open ear to ear. Was it a real and constant temptation, was it a plague? Did she have to bite back her bloodlust every single second in my company, all too aware of the terrible crimes she could commit? I wondered if it was a steady stream of unwavering instincts, like DNA, refusing to clot, or if she went through dreamlike apparitions when it was dark and still, flashing like nightmares.

I used my boyfriend as a façade for my need to know what it was like.

"You know," I whispered, "I can never seem to get over it, the way Edward sticks around me. Even though it puts him through hell having to exercise such will power and concentration like he does, you know?"

Alice nodded, her brow clouded from introspection. She turned her head and looked at me with deep, grave eyes as I tentatively went on. I asked her what it was like, that bloodlust, almost afraid of the answer. I feared that she would say it was agony, I feared I would have to hate myself for doing this to her, to her whole family, really. But she cast her gaze around the room, searching for the words to weave to help me understand, and called me a cavity. A strung out, thought out, simple metaphor… and as I listened to Alice's voice halt and resume and lilt thoughtfully, I knew that she would never hurt me. Those few lines of explanation, her large eyes soulful and affixed in mine, and the blood was nothing but a bad dream. This was my best friend, and she loved me too much to let anything happen to me. Was she a monster, a dragon: no, never. My prince, my knight in shining armor? It wasn't like her to be valiant, to rescue me. It wasn't her way.

She looked down at the quilt, shyly, and said I was sweet.

And I wondered, because I was selfish and greedy and perhaps wildly optimistic, if she might have loved me in return. I wanted nothing more in the world – unreasonably because I already had the world – than for her to feel the same way, to know the surprise of her precious affection and of being requited. But could she ever want another girl? I couldn't guess, I couldn't fathom. Could she ever want me? I couldn't for the life of me imagine the possibility of me and my best friend.

And I asked, because I was sneaky and scared and perhaps curious for more than just clues, if she had ever loved a human. Had she ever loved me? I recognized that it wasn't about finding if the answer could be yes or no. It was a game I was playing with myself, knowing the answer could never be but needing to ask for the sake of going through the pantomime.

I didn't want the pessimism, though. And I neither wanted the optimism, in all its headstrong foolishness. I just wanted to hear whatever words poured from her mouth. My hand crept into hers.

When she said yes she was beautiful, eyes raw with nostalgia. It tugged at me to think that her love was certainly dead now. Time was cruel, cruel to my poor Alice.

"The first was more than sixty years ago." Her voice was husky, faraway. Gone long back to a time when she'd no doubt had that cavity. Now all that was left, I could only guess… that ache? I'd never had to let someone slip away. "We went to the same high school," she went on, "and she was… she was incredible."

One tiny admission and I felt my affection bloom like crocuses. The fact that Alice could like a girl, the fact that she had in fact _loved_ a girl? Minor. The fact that she was so gripped in her memory, so gripped in this girl that she was unable to be swayed by insecurity or worry of her admission? She wasn't thinking, _oh god I've been found out I wonder what Bella thinks of me now she knows I'm not normal_. She was too busy in her past, enraptured in purity of clarity of sorrow, gazing at the grain of the wooden surface of my desk. That vulnerability? Major.

But now I felt a sort of numbness creeping up my limbs, my skin's own way of thinking that this couldn't be happening, this was the part where I would wake up and try to picture what would happen if the dream went on to maybe kissing her. My heartbeat quickened (_calm yourself, remember your blood_). What was it all? Stupid pessimism. Stupid optimism. The words were going to tumble out of my mouth. I needed to know.

"And the second?"

* * *

**_  
Monday_**

The yellow lines streaming down the road flutter and run together as I cruise along. My left shoulder stings like peppered needle pricks as the seatbelt cuts into the sensitive flesh. Just like it does from the strap of my backpack. Just like its phantom pang will likely fade in at insistent, sporadic intervals when there is no bother for it to hurt. A reminder; karma perhaps, if I believe in that sort of thing.

For some reason (blame it on my mood), I wish I knew what it was like lose those I loved to my inability to drown in time with them.

* * *

**_  
Friday_**

I found myself thinking of the silver Volvo, curiously enough, and its liquid thrill of speed (as Alice's mouth ghosted down the curve of my neck like a car gliding down a shortcut road). In the Volvo, there was always electric exhilaration, like on one of those roller coasters I never really liked when I was a kid. Just too fast. The car was too fast, green of the trees whipping by in a kaleidoscope of foliage until I closed my eyes, feeling that my mind was separating from my body.

Just too fast. A hazard to my health.

Perhaps my mind was on the Volvo because with Alice propped on her elbow, leaning in and tasting my skin as I tried to even out my breathing, I felt that same sort of vertigo. Dizzy (but in a good way), exhilarated (but in a very good way, afire from the jittery need to touch Alice and never stop), and… well, I couldn't put words to the sensation. Something in me warned to compare Alice to the car (sleek and lithe and beautiful), and to think about whether or not this was far too fast too.

_Slow down, Bella?_

I just couldn't.

I moaned as Alice's teeth grazed my collarbone, skimming along my shoulder, tracing the faint pink line where my bra strap used to be. And my fingers had their own mind, crawling impatiently along her skin, and I just _had_ to touch her, just _needed_ this so much. This was about love, (something of the sort), this was about the summit of weeks of wanting, this was about hypnotism, this was about running off instinct like a wild animal. Running… gunning it… pushing the limit… Admittedly, I should have been cautious and even worried that I was losing control (or something of the sort), but I felt strangely secure. This was what I wanted. This was Alice.

And all at the same time I really could hardly string two thoughts together. I felt my way along.

* * *

**_  
Sunday_**

Edward never came. He may have been angry with me for blowing him off the night before, he may have been angry because he may have found out what I had done, he may have forgot. I slept alone that night and, oddly enough, it was a slumber deep and calm as death.

* * *

**_  
Saturday_**

When I woke I was still in a dream. Dawn meant streams of sunlight, normally, but Forks wasn't normal; instead, the first tendrils of the day's light canvassed my bedroom like smoke, barely illuminating a thing. There was hardly a change from night, except for the tiniest increase of visibility that lent me the ability to make out the curves and lines of the body nestled against mine. My eyes flickered open only for my lashes to brush Alice's jaw; my lips touched the perfectly smooth skin of her neck. I couldn't help but smile at the perfect proximity, unable to imagine a better way to wake up.

"You're awake."

She had been lying so still I had forgotten that she didn't even sleep. I rolled my neck, working out a few kinks, and looked up at Alice. She smiled down at me.

"Did you lie here all night?" I asked blearily, blinking several times.

She stretched luxuriously, like a cat. "Yes," she said simply. "It was nice, your breathing at such a slow pace is quite hypnotic."

"I had you trapped, didn't I?" I murmured lazily, "Lying all over you like that?"

"Well, that too," Alice replied. "I hadn't the strength to roll you off me, I had no choice but to stay here."

"I'm sorry. Won't happen again."

"Won't it?" Alice looked down at the edge of the quilt shyly. "I wouldn't mind."

This was the part where I looked all around me and my mind went blank. "I don't know," I said softly, unsure what I even meant.

Alice turned onto her back and gazed at the ceiling thoughtfully. "You don't know," she repeated. I guess she knew what it meant. Then she turned her head to look me in the eye. "So what now?"

"I don't know," I sighed, running a hand through my hair. "I don't know that either, I don't know much of anything right now."

She gazed at me appraisingly, but gently, for a few moments. Her delicate features were sharpened in calm focus. "So honestly, Bella," she asked. "Why did you kiss me last night?"

"Because…" I began slowly. "Because I'm pretty sure I fell for you. And it was all so perfect. But…" I paused, trying to sort out my words. "But it's not all perfect, is it?" I looked into Alice's eyes imploringly.

She shook her head. And once again, she understood my broken, patchwork statement; the fact that she could understand me even when I was far from articulate, why could she do that so well? Why did she have to be so perfect?

"It isn't," she said softly. "You and Edward, everything… No, it's not perfect." A pause as she bit her lip. "But…" Now it was her turn to struggle for words. "Don't tell me you regret last night."

"No," I replied truthfully. "I don't regret it. I have these feelings for you, Alice, I really like you." My throat stung to admit it. Even though we'd hooked up last night, I was still shy to admit my feelings. "But Edward…"

"But Edward," she repeated, sighing. He was the problem. And, truthfully, I was the problem.

"So what are you going to do with me?" Alice whispered.

I closed my eyes to try and compress some stillness in my head. "I don't know what I _can_ do with you," I said. "Edward…"

"Yes, Edward," Alice said sadly, a little impatiently. She and I both knew that this was a tricky situation, this wasn't exactly fairness unfolding, this was potential hurt for someone or probably everyone. Edward was my boyfriend. Of course I had to keep repeating his name like a talisman of some kind, the reason why I couldn't talk about something real with Alice. Cruel of me. Selfish of me. But… but I loved him. I did. And Alice… I didn't know. All I knew was that I didn't want to lose her.

This was all crumbling so quickly and so easily, but somewhere in a pocket of my mind I must have known it was coming. The pessimism resurfacing, the pessimism knowing even as I reached euphoria in Alice's arms last night that it was an affair. And that was a shame, a shame because it wasn't about cheating (though that's what it was), it was giving into temptation. But also really and truly wanting her; I wanted her so much. I still wanted her, really, lying on my side inches apart from her and surveying the way her body made such small movements like blinking and shifting weight.

"I can't help myself," I whispered, needing for Alice to understand. "I couldn't help it."

"I know," she said softly.

"But this shouldn't…" I continued, taking a deep breath, "This can't happen again. I can't cheat on Edward like this."

I saw the word _cheat_ flash in Alice's amber eyes, the cheapness and finality of the term wringing her thoughts.

"Bella," she said quietly, looking back to the ceiling. "While I understand your rationale, I must admit to you that right now I am feeling rather used."

Her quiet calm distressed me. "Don't be like that," I sighed. "Please, you know that I like you, I really do, but-"

"But you don't know what you want," she interrupted firmly. She sat up to look me straight in the eye. "And _you_ know that _I_ like _you_. I'm sorry, Bella, but I can't pretend that this doesn't upset me."

"What do you expect," I countered, my insides clenching with sinking panic, "for me to break up with Edward over you? No, I don't think you're a mistake, but I just can't do that to him. Or myself."

"I'm not expecting anything," Alice said sadly, "But I had hoped for a little regard. For me and for what I would feel. And…" she got to her feet. I watched numbly, still lying on the bed. "And it's all come down to me as the woman on the side, I guess." And still I watched, at a complete loss for anything to say (I could have kicked myself), as she picked her shirt off the floor and put it back on. The thing that killed me the most, I realized as Alice crossed to the window, was the fact that she didn't even sound angry. She wasn't even angry with me; her words were laced with a frustrated sadness.

"And the saddest part is, I guess," she said softly across the room from me, her exquisite features drawn in tired regret, "that it won't stop here, will it?"

With one more parting glance, Alice nimbly crept out the window. I knew she was right.

* * *

**_  
Monday_**

I climb out of the truck and heave my backpack over my shoulder, wincing at the prickling pain of the strap on the tender mark Alice's mouth had left. The girl who put it there, she won't stop breezing through my mind. No, nothing ended, she was right. Really, I muse as I traipse in from the parking lot, the whole thing has just begun. For that I'm apprehensive; I'm pessimistic and optimistic mixed, that sour hybrid. And for that I'm strangely glad.

* * *

  
_**A/N:** Next chapter will incorporate the song more, I promise._


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note**: I have a feeling this chapter might be FAR too angsty and FAR too dramatic. But then again, that's basically the format of the whole story. Jealous angst. I've made Alice quite the Negative Nancy, but what would you do in this situation? So I really don't even know why I added the beginning part, but I feel like it adds something. I don't know. Don't get too thrown off by it, take it in slowly.  
So I've hidden a Tegan & Sara song reference in this chapter (besides the obvious from The Ocean, duh). First reviewer to tell me what it is gets a oneshot dedicated to them! Yay! :D_

* * *

_Wednesday June 3__rd__, 1940_

Under cover of the trees bowing and crowding over the narrow dirt lane, the sunlight was diluted and weak, breaking through in silvery shafts between gaps every here and there. They flashed by as the truck barreled down the shady road, dust flaring up in its wake and swirling around the moving vehicle as it jostled on uneven gravel and potholes. It wasn't hot inside the truck; it wasn't hot outside of it either, for that matter, nor was it hot out of the cover of the trees and under the sun. Even in the tentative beginnings of summer neither the heat nor the brightness got very strong; the sun was just weak here. And that was convenient, I suppose, for us. Our family had chosen this location for that very same reason, after all.

"You're not going out to the hillside, are you?" Carlisle had asked earlier that afternoon, wary of the open landscape and its limited protection from the sun. He looked over at me over the banister of the staircase, seeming strangely tired.

"I don't know," I called curtly over my shoulder as I shut the front door behind me. I _was_ being honest after all; I had no idea where Bella was planning on taking me. That was usually how surprises worked.

As I sat in the passenger's side of the leathery old truck an hour or so later, I felt all the tension from being cooped up in that house drift away, like it was dandelion spores drifting from my palm out the open window to be carried away by the breeze. It was just so good to get out of there; away from Esme and Carlisle trying to coax me and govern me as they hushed their own tensions. I knew they meant well. I wasn't ungrateful for how much they'd done for me, but even though I was technically thirty-nine years old by now, I still felt like the teenager I embodied. It was a relief to have the cautionary voices stop, a relief to hop in a truck and just ride away.

Then there were the others. I sighed and chewed on the nail of my little finger distractedly. I was beginning to regard myself as very brooding, which honestly I had become lately. And then my family became concerned and treated me like a completely different person, like a stranger, which only made it worse. So I was feeling a little strained; we all were.

All of us, as a household, were going through a period of slight darkness. The big things ensnared our minds like vines, the thought of our endless half-lives, our curse, tightening stealthily until we were crippled with moodiness. And the little things crept up on us too; I watched Emmett and Rosalie, so in love with each other, and it made the cavity in my chest ache with muted jealousy. Honestly, I was lonely. I longed for a companion, a lover, a cool kiss in a quiet room with drawn curtains. Edward, I knew, wanted the same thing. I could see how he longed for solace in the way his white knuckles flexed, the way he gazed at the sunlight in patches on the lawn as though it was the love he was searching for. He and I, though, we never turned to the side and saw each other. We did not want to comfort one another, to fall in love out of convenience and need. We looked straight ahead. Perhaps it was best that way. I would look ahead, or perhaps out of a window, and wish for Bella to come back from wherever she was when she wasn't with me, and rescue me from this house.

_All around me new love and it makes me sad,  
All around me feeling sure that you'll be back…_

But now I was with her. The truck rolled down the road, its gritty engine rumbling, and with every passing second we were further away from everything. It was like something in me, something tied tight like those vines of worry, was tied to the porch railing of our house, and it just kept unraveling and unraveling as I got further and further away. I looked over at Bella, her smooth, pale hand curled upon the ribbed steering wheel and her bright brown eyes on the road ahead, and I smiled. I felt… alive.

"Where are you taking me?" I said a bit more softly than I had intended, my voice hoarse from a few minutes of easy silence.

Bella looked over at me and grinned, her playful eyes twinkling. "Oh, you'll see," she said mischievously, a tone of voice that did strange things to me. "I think you'll like it, I've always wanted to check this place out."

"Let me guess," I asked lightly, tapping my chin thoughtfully. "Did you find another old Prohibition bunker?"

"Nope, try again."

"More arrowheads?"

Bella's grin curled up further, just like the strange warmth in my abdomen. "Guess again."

"Well…" I trailed off, thoroughly enjoying this guessing game. "Don't tell me you've found another collapsed root cellar."

She chuckled, light and raspy, as her happy eyes sparkled behind the laughing half-moons of her cheekbones. And I thought, if summer had a sound, that would be it. "How about you wait and see?" she said.

I looked at her shorts, how the ragged cuffs cut off just at a glimpse of her slender thigh, and at the way she caught her lower lip between her white teeth as she focused on the road. Then I looked ahead of me at the winding brown road and limitless treeline. "Ok," I replied, and I felt blurry contentment simmer somewhere near my pelvic bone like a cloud of dragonflies.

* * *

"Come on," Bella called over her shoulder as she climbed over a fallen tree, thick hair tumbling across her playful smile as she turned back at me.

"I'm right behind you," I called back good-naturedly. I could easily have picked my way nimbly over the debris and made twice the distance in half the time, but I preferred the slower trek. The nature, the wildlife, the simple atmosphere, the company… I liked taking my time behind Bella, curiously taking in the way she moved: delicate, deliberate, cautious not to trip and fall. I smiled at her figure clambering over the trunk as I strolled along. Simple pleasures.

And then, in the blink of an eye: Bella's foot caught on a gnarled root; her eyelashes flew back in surprise and gravity subtly arched her spine (all this like a zoom lens in my eagle eyes). And before I knew it, I was in motion; by her side in an instant, arms out like fluid sinew, and her soft figure tumbled down into me. Her heart beat rapidly like a muffled triphammer, resounding melodically with my eardrums. Her cheeks colored, her expression was bright with breathless surprise as she looked into my eyes. _All frozen_.

"Thanks," she said after a moment's silence with a slow smile, her arms slung around my neck.

"Anytime," I murmured. Her body seemed almost heavy in my arms with its closeness and its warmth, the moment strangely quiet and real. A bird trilled in the distance.

I gently put her down and forced a smile as she nodded and continued down the sparse path. Safely out of view behind her back, I raised my eyes to the canopy of trees and heaved a great sigh. Why, for the first time in nearly twenty years, did it seem like I had a heartbeat? And why was that slivery phantom pulse hammering so hard? And why was it because of Bella?

* * *

"Okay, come on," Bella said quickly, excited but not impatient. Her eyes shone with enthusiasm as she held down her hand to help me up the pile of logs and wood planks blocking the mouth of the mine. I smiled sheepishly as I allowed her to pull me up, trying to forget that I could easily have cleared the entrance myself, let alone scale the heap of debris with no trouble. We slipped in through the gaping space near the ceiling and dropped to our feet on the ground.

"Isn't this great?" she whispered as we picked our way down the mineshaft, the pinpoint of light diminishing further with every steep we took. In the light from the lantern Bella held, moss and cobwebs papering the craggy rock wall were visible.

"How did you find this place?" My voice echoed once, a weak miniature of my already soft original, as I trailed my fingers along the crumbling dirt caking the wall. I received no answer, merely a furtive grin that Bella shot sideways at me. It was as if to say it was her little secret. But no, I realized as we drifted along in hushed silence, now it was our secret. No one else in the world knew this mineshaft existed, for all I knew or cared. Warmth, purely imagined but real to me all the same, spidered up my skin.

"Alice?" Bella said after a few minutes, her voice cool and thoughtful in the surreal half-darkness.

"Mhmm."

"Have you ever been in love?"

I didn't know how to answer. I didn't _know_ the answer. "I don't know," I murmured truthfully.

"I don't know either," she answered quietly, an unfamiliar and somehow intimate hesitance in her voice. "I don't really know anything about it." She sighed, most of her face in shadow as she turned away.

I stayed still as a statue against the wall, back pressing the cold, hard rock face and dirt crumbling under my fingernails.

* * *

We reached the mouth of the mineshaft once again to see rain pouring outside, clattering off the finger-like criss-cross of logs across the entrance. Through the wider gaps I could see that it was coming down hard; the air was rich with the scent of ancient coal and heavy rainwater.

"Oh…" I said in slow disappointment as I stopped short.

"It's raining," Bella observed, chewing her lower lip as she looked out.

We waited a few moments, listening raptly to the mesmerizing din. If I listened too hard, closely enough for the drops to melt together into one sound, it sounded to me like the snowy static of a radio station not coming in. It was quite peaceful, actually.

But the static wasn't in the rain, no, it was in the coal-air filling the mouth of the mineshaft. I wondered if I lit a match I would go up in flames; some silly mining caution that I had likely mixed up somehow. I licked my lips, filled with that static and submerging pleasantly in the peaceful, all-encompassing sound of rain. It was the sort of shudder I got when I was about to have one of those strange visions, which I still wasn't used to, and I watched Bella's smooth pale skin shift and flex as she stretched. Then—

_I see us lying on a quilt, this girl and I, only it's not clear because the edges are faded and blurring like on television, and we are embracing, this girl and I, and so wonderfully, deliciously warm, this girl and I, and there's a red mark on her shoulder and I'm putting it there with my lips and my teeth and we're arching, this girl and I, and she has tangled brown hair (thanks to my fingers) and clear brown eyes and full swollen lips (thanks to God), this peculiar beautiful girl who looks quite a bit like—_

"Hey, are you okay?" Bella sounded slightly alarmed as she moved in close to me and put a tentative hand on my shoulder. She was frowning, and my stiffened body relaxed like rusty cogs and spokes grinding.

"Yeah," I muttered dryly, "I thought I was going to sneeze, but…"

Bella smiled crookedly and gave my shoulder a squeeze. "Alice," she said simply, like my name summed up everything succinctly perfectly. I wondered just what meaning precisely my name had been given by her mouth when she spoke it.

Then her smile grew mischievous, the conspiratorial smile I knew and loved (_…loved?_), as she looked into my eyes. I blinked. She leaned, leaned quickly and assuredly, but stopped just an inch away. A hitch of hesitance, one gentle puff of breath from her lips to mine (static). Then she closed the gap and kissed me.

"I think," she murmured, pulling back hardly an inch and whispering just a vibration against my lips, "I have feelings for you, Alice."

She kissed me again, hand trailing down my side and the other slung crookedly around my neck, _again_. My own hands pressed against the small of her back, pushing our waists together. She pulled back mere centimeters.

"I think," she breathed, "That I might love you."

I wished she would ask me again if I had ever been in love.

* * *

"Alice?"

I blearily look up from the blank lines of my history notebook at the sound of Rosalie's whisper. The corner of my chin is numb from having rested in my chin for… for just how long? But I'm mistaken anyway, it was an imagined numbness, as I have no circulation of blood to be cut off in the first place. Mossy rock walls dissolve from my mind like tissue paper in water as I look at Rosalie. Her eyes are narrowed at me in concern; to anyone who didn't know her it would look like suspicion.

"Are you alright?" she says in a low whisper, a whisper so faint that human ears would hardly be able to catch it even at the closest proximity. The class discussion swirls around us; we're fine.

"Yes," I lie dully, not meeting her eyes. I concentrate on my dream, trying to snatch back fleeting wisps. A dream, really? Without even sleeping? No, impossible. Premonition, then? It was vivid enough, but longer than any vision I'd ever had. Not to mention it was a flash from the _past_, not the future. Then, there was the matter of the face the girl had been given in my dream… What was with _that_? An impatient growl escapes my throat as my brow furrows. So does Rosalie's as she observes me.

"That was quite a daydream," she says slowly, distracted. "Alice, what's going on with you lately?"

I stare at the desktop for a moment, chewing my lip. Then I look back up to Rosalie and meet her steely amber gaze.

"Do you remember Ginny?"

Rosalie frowns and pauses, and for a moment it would seem she doesn't remember. If she's destined to live forever and doesn't have a good memory, I should worry. But then her gaze softens.

"Of course I remember," she murmurs. "How could I forget the girl who made my Alice happier than I have ever seen her?" And then she lays her hand upon mine, and my chest swells with appreciation so strongly and suddenly that it hurts.

"But Alice," she continues gently, frowning slightly still, "it's been sixty years, I thought you-"

"Does she remind you of anyone?" I interrupt. She thinks she has me figured out, thinks that I'm suddenly aching for my first love again after all these years.

Rosalie looks thoughtful for a moment as she ponders, and the classroom lecture drones on (_in 1865, President Licoln…_). Then, recognition dawns. A terrible and wonderfully exact epiphany illustrating her frighteningly beautiful features. And, because she's remarkably insightful, she adds it all up in her head.

"Bella?" she whispers, but when she says the name she _knows_, and she's asking another question entirely.

I nod wretchedly. There's nothing to say.

The shock still paints her face. "You too?" she asks before she can stop herself. I know what she's thinking, she's wondering what on earth must be so enthralling about this silly girl that she's captivated both Edward and I. I think upon Edward and the ugly thoughts that I hate resurface.

"If you only knew," I murmur. If she only knew how to look at Bella and see how heartbreakingly beautiful she is. If she only knew how Bella's blood races in her veins as it does in my mind, how she smells so faintly to me like warm (_scent of a temperature?_) laundry and fresh rain. If she only knew how much I hurt to love (_…love?_) Bella so hard, how much I hurt to think of her all through the night, how much I hurt to hate Edward this way, how much I hurt to feel so naked and defenseless. If she only knew that if I light a match in a mineshaft, my body might go up in flames.

If she only knew.

I'm overwhelmingly grateful that Rosalie doesn't ask me what happened; what exactly happened between Bella and I to cast such a pall over me. She leaves it be.

And I don't have to ask her not to tell anyone. She knows.

* * *

The morning wears on and I just can't stop thinking; thinking about my daydream, thinking about my shameful, irrepressible wants (still there), thinking of… no, incessantly _pricked_ by that clawing, sour jealousy. Am I angry that Bella had hurt me? Yes, in a way, but somehow I can't put it in terms of her own fault. The plague is moreso that jealousy. Am I pointedly resentful of Edward? Yes, in a way, but I'm hardly thinking concretely that I hate him for having Bella when I can't. No, nothing half so completely formed as that. It's moreso agony at imagination; I can't get pictures of them together out of my head. I thought I was special, in her arms. I felt I was the only one in the world to catch that certain puzzling smile, that intimate gaze just for me. She told me I was beautiful, murmuring eyes-shut with her hands upon me… but I find myself wondering what she tells Edward. No, I know what she tells him. She tells him she loves him.

I'm getting sick in my own thoughts. Nonstop it's like a movie playing, over and over again; his smooth white hand on her jaw, her neck, her lips. His smooth white mouth on her jaw, her neck, her lips… And she sits there so supine, she sits there like clay in his hands, and she forgets all about me. Or, far worse yet, she remembers me and I'm nothing more than the slightest twinge of guilt brushed hastily away.

I know I'm not hardhearted, but I had hoped I could at least close myself off from so much emotion. I'd hoped I could feel less than I'm feeling now, but at the moment it's a downright onslaught. At the moment, I'm hating myself for allowing myself to get so torn up over this, and I'm contemplating going home. Because the morning is nearly over and then it's lunch, when I have to sit chasing food I can't eat around a tray with a fork and, incidentally, when I have to see Bella. I wonder with a grim sort of curiosity if perhaps she might have skipped school today, if she feels like being just as immature as I do and wants to avoid me. If so, all that means is she's beaten me to it. And that makes me scowl and feel downright ashamed that Bella and I can't just talk about this like rational adults. No, actually we _had_ talked about this. Saturday morning. Just too afraid to come face to face then? It makes sense. Still, I recall seeing her truck in the parking lot that morning (and how I'd involuntarily cringed at the sight). She's here today. And I desperately want to see her… No, no I _don't_.

But already I'm looking ahead and I see afternoon classes and that's Biology, where Bella and Edward are lab partners, and somehow that's far far worse. I won't even be there, but yet it's going to be hell as I sit in English Literature and let my thoughts get carried away. I know Bella very well, I know her weaknesses as well as her strengths. I know that her doubt (I hope she has doubt, I dearly hope she has doubt, and how pathetic is that?) pushes her to cling to others for certainty, and I know that she's going to latch to Edward more fiercely than usual to convince herself that she still loves him.

…_If I imagine you, body next to another._

This judge of Bella's character really isn't necessarily fact, but my insecurity breeds insurmountable pessimism. Yet… Sunday night when I'd tormented myself imagining them lying peacefully side by side in her bed, my fears had turned out fruitless, Edward was home. What if I have reason to allow myself a little more hope? What if I have reason to believe in Bella having a conscience?

The fact that I keep thinking she has absolutely no conscience for me is just a testimony to how incredibly insecure this whole _affair_ has made me.

I think of lipstick on collars and foreign perfumes and out-of-the-way motels in the same instant I conjure the word _affair_, and somehow I feel even worse. Just like when Bella had said _cheat_, the plain and ugly terminology is like being doused with water. Even when I say it to myself.

I heave a sigh – a huge, all-suffering sigh – and shut my locker. This is ridiculous. I want to go home, I want to go shopping, I want to sleep. Above all things, I want to sleep. But I trudge to my fourth hour class, English Lit, through my exhaustion. The tiredness, it would seem, is not a physical state but an emotional state. It's like being a vampire has transformed exhaustion into a mood; a bad mood. I get to class and drop into my seat, waiting for the bell ring and waiting for the class to start and finish and waiting for the day to end and waiting for the week, month, year to end and waiting for god knows what. The bell rings.

Ten minutes later, the teacher's last piece of chalk crumbles to dust in her hand. When she asks for a volunteer to run and get more in the supply building, I raise my hand, itching to get out of the classroom and get some fresh air. The gray-haired woman is surprised to see me volunteer; I'm the student who does very well in class, in a bored sort of way, and hardly ever speaks or participates. But she lets me go.

I take my time walking through the damp grass, scuffing my shoes, enjoying the sharpness the smells and sounds of outside are given by my enhanced senses. For a split second, I'm overwhelmed by a desire to run. To run from school, from rules, from civilization and let my instincts consume me. How easy it would be to live in the wild, to let the camouflage and stealth and prowling amount to more than just an obligatory sabbatical from the _real_ world. What world is more real than the primal one? How much more real do I feel moving fluid through pines than I do moving fluid down a road in a Volvo? But a moment later the idea passes (like that wild idea I'd had to see Bella last night), and I breathe again and just enjoy what I _have_ got and continue walking.

But the instincts, my feral instincts, needle me just before I round a corner and I know, just _know_ that something awful is waiting. But civilization has dulled me, I don't recognize the warning. I go on, round the corner, not realizing I'm holding my breath, and-

It's sharp and sudden as one of my visions, but it's not. I round the corner and there they are, there's Bella and she's touching Edward's sleeve as she leans back against the brick and he leans into her, leans down into her. And he's taller and towers over her and for some reason that feels so horribly _wrong_, and that's the first wrong thing that strikes me, the first thing that strikes me at all as my eyes land on them and I stop in my tracks. And I actually do see it in her eyes, I see a form of that clinging I had so hoped I was inventing, but she's looking at him like he's an anchor and like he'll fix all of her problems (me being one of them). And a split second later, she stands on her toes and he swiftly swoops in and they awkwardly kiss. But they're kissing all the same, and that must be what she wanted all along in meeting him out here in secret or however they've done it and snuck away, must have been her emergency need to rekindle and recapture or whatever it is she needs. I feel like I can't even fathom what she needs or wants anymore, but that's not even true anymore. With a pang I realize that I know she needs and wants to be sure, and she needs and wants Edward, and she just doesn't or can't find a way to fit in her confusion over me. Me, ruining everything. I want to run before they see me there… but of course that doesn't happen.

Bella and Edward look up from each other, surprise painting their slack mouths as they register my presence. It takes everything I've got to act only mildly flustered, as the average sister/friend would be, as Bella smooths out her wrinkled flannel shirt and looks positively aghast.

"Alice," Edward says hoarsely, the beginnings of a sheepish grin on his lips and his hands still on Bella's arms. I need to, want to leave.

Forcing a smile is like cutting the expression into my skin with a blade. "I'm sorry," I choke. And I spin on my heel and walk in the completely opposite direction, but only a fraction of a second after I catch Bella's heartbroken expression. I'm walking and walking and it's like I'm a robot or something (robots have no pulse, they're not human) because I just go on autopilot. It's the least I could have done for Edward's sake, downplay my reaction so as to not cause any suspicion, and my insides are screaming at Bella for the wits to do the same. I'm almost to the Volvo in the parking lot, and I don't know why I'm going there but it's the right choice, and I just need to sit in it for a few minutes or maybe the rest of the day. But before I get to it, I hear Bella's feet pounding after me and of course she hasn't been heartbreakingly nonchalant for Edward's sake. Foolish, compassionate girl, running after me and not caring what she might seem to her confused boyfriend.

"Wait, Alice, wait!" And her hair is flying out behind her and another button on her shirt has come undone, exposing another inch or so of her collarbone.

And I'm not angry and I'm not so upset as I would think as she reaches me and I tug open the car door. But am I hurt? Yes. I don't care.

"I need a moment," I say evenly, but she grips the door, ready to say something that she hopes will make it all go away.

"Alice," she pants, "I'm so sorry."

"So am I," I say through gritted teeth, but they're not clenched in anger, and she knows that as well as I. So if I hadn't said it out of bitterness, then why? Sadness? Real apology?

And then Bella seems to realize she doesn't know what to say next. "Please," she pleads, "You just have to understand, this isn't easy for-"

"Bella, I _get_ it." I'm raising my voice unintentionally. I wish she would understand that I _do_ understand, that I know the complications and the obligations. "I know you have to do these things that are right, I get that."

"Then why the hell do I have to feel so guilty?" Her voice is louder now too, and she's looking more and more distraught, running a hand through her hair and looking off across the parking lot.

"Yeah, why do you?" I repeat the question, somewhat lying. She _should_ feel guilty because she's hurting me. Even though she shouldn't. "Really, you're moving on. You're okay."

"Am I now?"

"Why shouldn't you be? You made your choice." The words escape before I can stop them from betraying me. Before I can stop from admitting, in so many words, that she can sleep easy at night and I can't.

And Bella picks up on this, and her face contorts in disbelief. "You think I got my way?" she shouts, sounding almost near hysterics and her turnaround from contrite to defensive catches me off guard. She takes a few steps towards me, and I can see her cracking from the stress right before my eyes. "You think I make my choice and I actually _want_ this?" Then her voice cracks. "Do you know how much I think of you?"

"Why?" is all I'm capable of, too weak for a more specific question as I watch the breakdown take place on her beautiful face and trembling lips. I still stand halfway in the car.

"I don't know why I'm so selfish," she admits quietly. "I have Edward and still I want you. I want you so much even when I know how it hurts you both, and I don't know how to make it any other way." She pauses. "Please don't do this to me. I can't keep away from you."

I know it's against my better judgment but I want her too. I want her all or nothing, and the only possible way to get back to nothing is to go back before I'd met her. I know I can't live with the vertigo of this maddening, jealous affair, but I know even surer that I can't keep away from her either. And her chest is still heaving as I shut the car door, and I take a few tentative steps toward her as though I'm scared of her. For all I know, I might be. Maybe I am, maybe I should be, for all the ways this fragile human girl could destroy me if she so chose. I'd been given a taste of it already.

"Let me think," I say to Bella in the calmest voice I can manage. She looks at me for a moment, wary to let me alone, to let me out of her sight. "Just a few minutes," I add. "Please."

She nods softly and I get in the car. I back out of the parking lot and I drive.

* * *

I'm going faster than I've ever gone in this car. I am, it seems, the only one of my siblings who ever obeys the speed limit, but something has got my foot pressed hard to the gas and hungry for that reckless thrill of velocity. So I drive, and I try to think rationally. But before that comes all that comes is the thought, would I cry if I were human with tears in me? Would I be so overwhelmed? I can't conceive crying over a girl; I'd never done it before. But it's hard to say now.

_On the drive back here I was worrying over nothing.__  
On the drive back there tears spilling over something.  
When I imagine you, body next to another._

I think _yet again _of Bella and Edward and my speed jumps up fifteen miles. No, I can't stay away from Bella. I don't hate her. I don't think her malicious or necessarily selfish; just unfortunately compromised. I think, even, that I might love her or something of the sort. And so I think, no, I _won't_ be able to keep away. And yes, I do want her even if it's shared. And I know that it will go like this without her leaving Edward for me or anything like that; because she can't. She's not selfish, she's compromised. How do I know that I wouldn't do the same, were I already in a relationship? It's not easy to let someone go like that.

But maybe, I think, she can learn to muster the courage to break it off with him. I hope so, at least. Until then, perhaps I need to learn to be that other woman. I'm not going to have a choice, unless I can resist Bella. And I know I can't.

* * *

"So I've decided," I say softly and deliberately, looking deep into Bella's eyes as we lean on the hood of the Volvo, making sure that I've got her undivided attention, "that I can't go on like we've been the past few days." Bella nods, biting her lip, and I continue. "You and Edward… is going to hurt me. That is a given. But I want you, and I want this, hurt and all."

Bella takes my hand, catching me by surprise with its warmth, and squeezes gently. "I'm sorry," she whispers again, repeating her apology for the need to say it over and over.

"It's okay," I tell her, and I try to smile and I try to mean it. And surprisingly, as the warmth from Bella's hand slowly seeps through my skin, I find I _do_ mean both. I'm relieved to be okay with being around her again, relieved to have her back with me even if it's in such a strange relationship. And I know that now is not the right time or place, but I lean in to place a ginger kiss on her lips. Just to let her know I'm still here.

* * *

_**A/N:** Tell me what you think. :)  
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	4. Chapter 4

_**Author's Note:** Sorry it took so long to update, I was trying to figure out what to put in this chapter and how to fit it all in; not to mention I had finals. But here it is, in all its angsty glory; I tried to make it nice and substantial to make up for leaving you without an update for so long. I'm thinking one more chapter after this, then it'll be over. I hope you like this one, don't hesitate to review. You know how much I love feedback. :)  
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* * *

  
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**_Tuesday_**

The first day back to Alice, back from wherever it was we'd been apart, unable to even look at each other, is like renaissance. We'd worked it all out, yesterday, and… And nothing has been resolved. It's strange that way, but I don't complain. I feel overwhelming relief to be able to comfortably talk to her again as a friend, to have her back from that dark weekend and have her as my best friend again. And it isn't just me, foolishly thinking everything is ok again (_is it?_). No matter what is the situation, no matter what is true, even if everything is getting swept under the rug, Alice is relieved too. I can see it in her eyes when she finds me at school in the morning, when she picks my face out of the crowd and her eyes just light up, exhausted. She's drained from everything, probably wary too, but it's just too good to be back to… to good.

And still it's like we're back to basics. Renaissance, rebirth, beginning. She's afraid to touch me, it seems, even on accident, and I swear to god if she could have blushed when her hand brushed mine on the table during lunch, she would have been crimson. It's shyness, on both sides, and it's sweet and surreal. It's a new game, this, and it hasn't even started yet.

"Hey," I say simply, jogging up beside Alice on our way to the parking lot. She smiles over at me, and for a split second my fingers itch to reach out and thread between hers.

"Hi Bella." And when she says it it's like I don't even understand why there has to be any conflicts at all. If there weren't so many people around, I would definitely hold her hand. No doubt. Funny, the way I have so much apprehension about this. The secrecy, the apprehension, it all makes me deflate for a moment. It's not fair, though it's really ridiculous for me to think that anything is unfair to _me_. It doesn't apply to me when I'm the… I'm the cheater, not Alice. She's the one to be hurting over this, but still. It doesn't stop what I'm feeling.

Oh, the guilt.

"Will you come home with me?" It's blurted from my mouth before I can even stop it. The overwhelming desire to just be with her… it's far too strong. And the slow smile that curls up the corners of her mouth, exposing those milky white teeth, it's too much. It's all so very awkward but even if I can't diffuse it I've got to continue on the maze. It's Alice. She does things to me.

"Well." She looks at her shoes. "Sure." And I smile back, and still I've never been more confused in my life. As Bella goes over to the Volvo to talk to Edward, quickly and curtly explain her change in transportation, he looks over at me and raises an eyebrow and nods. My stomach plummets. I wonder what's wrong with me, why I'm so torn. It's clear to me that I feel things around Alice that I don't feel around Edward, that there are ways I'm more myself around her. If it seems I'd rather be spending my time with her, then… then why can't I break things off with Edward and just stop putting Alice through this? If I want to be with her so badly, why don't I just do so?

For one thing, for one silly and embarrassing thing, I've never broken up with anyone before. Worst reason in the world. I don't know how to do it, I'm sure I would be the first one in tears. And Edward was my first love… _is_ my first love. Isn't he? Don't I love him still, even though we may have lost that – damn me for the triteness of the term – that spark? Doesn't that happen with deep relationships, don't they weather the storms? It doesn't feel like a storm, though. Edward is like a sweater that's faded from going through the laundry so many times. And it kills me to think of him like that, after everything, that I could be so remarkably careless with this relationship, with his emotions, but… I can't _not_ follow my heart. The last time we kissed, like the times before that, it was pale and tired and just _nothing_. It was me forcing it to try and find what I'd lost, to try and – yes, I'll admit it – get Alice off my mind. But she appeared within seconds, and when she was there that wellspring surged again. It hadn't surged for Edward for weeks.

I guess I'm really just scared to do something so drastic as breaking up with him. Even though it's the logical thing to do; no, it's the _right_ thing to do. Logic has hardly anything to do with it. I'm not brave. Honestly, I never have been. I'm too terrified to take a step in the direction of breaking someone's heart, perhaps even more terrified than I'd ever been to take a step in the direction of getting closer to anyone.

Or maybe I'm really just so selfish that I want to cling to the best of both worlds. A secure, loving boyfriend (though secure is relative when you're thinking in terms of vampires), and an amazingly magnetic… something. Alice is just a something. Maybe that's because she's too incredible for nouns, or maybe it's because I'm too squeamish of the term _lover_. It's a cheap and sleazy label she doesn't deserve. But here I am stringing them both along, and why? Because I want them both, I want it all, _I don't know what I want_? But it's possible that I _do_ know what I want. The dilemma is getting over myself and making the commitment to what I want, which shouldn't be this hard.

"Okay," Alice says, sliding into the passenger's seat beside me. "Ready to go." And she smiles at me and sits back, content to ride shotgun and let me rumble along slowly. It just makes a comparison sting in my mind, how Edward always broods impatiently and wants to be the one to drive. And here Alice is, perfectly fine with sitting back and enjoying a longer ride. My chest swells as I back out of the parking lot, and as the wind whistles through my slightly open window and we roll down a deserted highway, I tentatively (_bravely?_) reach over and put my hand on Alice's.

"I've been wanting to do this all day," I admit shyly, sincerely. I sneak a glance off the road over at Alice, and she smiles. And her cool fingers entwine in mine, and really I'm not at all surprised that they mesh in a perfect fit.

* * *

**_Sunday (2 months earlier)_**

The gray waves roared and hissed over the jagged rocks, pushing skeletal clusters of driftwood against the rough sandbars. I could hardly hear my own delicate footfalls, insignificant and deliberate as they were as I picked my way over tangled seaweed and twigs closer to the fringe of trees. Still, from where we were I could still feel the spray gently wetting my skin. I could only imagine how salty my hair would smell when I got home; when I showered later and wrung out my hair, the scent would pour out and somehow I would feel still connected to the shore and its wild murmuring silence.

"What are you thinking about?" Jacob asked. When I looked over at him, his hands were shoved in his pockets and he was looking off at the face of the cliffs, his own face bold and square in profile. I was amazed at the way he didn't even need to look where he was going; then again, this was a Quileute native here, not clumsy me.

"Not much," I said without much commitment, eyes still on my feet. Actually, besides the contemplation of the scenery and its eerie peacefulness (which oddly suited me perfectly), there was a lot I was thinking about. I was actually tempted to tell Jacob, sorely tempted, but somehow I couldn't find a way to gather the words. This was the last day of spring break, well spent at La Push with the one friend I _wouldn't_ be seeing tomorrow at school. It was serene and out there and just far away enough from home that I felt detached from… from what was bugging me. But still close enough to feel it nagging my throat to be talked about. The fact that tomorrow was so near was, I guess, cause enough. Back to that strange and surreal distraction…

"Hey Jake?"

He looked over at me and smiled disarmingly. "What's up?"

"Have you ever…" It was hard to put this into words, I had the notion hardly even formed in my head. The question, its subject, they were clouds. I sighed. "This is gonna sound ridiculous, but do you believe in forbidden love?"

He couldn't help it. He chuckled, his slanted brown eyes almost disappearing behind the crescents of his cheekbones. "Are you talking, like, Romeo and Juliet?" Before I could respond (protest), he went on. "'Cause I've seen it, I mean, you and Edward are about as _forbidden love_ as it gets."

I rolled my eyes and grinned wanly. "I mean like…" I struggled with putting it into words, my brow knitting. "Someone out of the ordinary."

"Again, Edward."

I looked up at the patched gray sky and groaned in exasperation. It was hard to try and get what I wanted by being mysterious with Jacob. He was too… genuine. "Haven't you ever had feelings for someone you shouldn't?"

A slow grin broke out across his broad face. "Bella, there's no 'shouldn't'. There's just the feelings and you just have 'em." His smile turned into a rueful smirk. "Even if it is a guy like Edward," he admitted, rolling his eyes.

I blushed, a small smile forming on my lips. "Yeah," I mumbled. Even if it wasn't really even about Edward. Still, the innocent sincerity of Jacob's philosophy made me feel better. Even if I still felt that strange worrying flutter.

"What's this about, anyway?" Jacob asked curiously, stepping over a gnarled log. I nearly tumbled headfirst over it.

"Oh, nothing," I said as I regained my footing.

He stopped in his tracks and raised an eyebrow at me.

"Really," I asserted. "It's no big deal, I'd tell you if something was going on. I'm just a little confused about something right now."

"Okay," he said with a noncommittal shrug. I appreciated the fact that he didn't press further questions because I honestly would have had no way to answer.

* * *

**_Monday_**

When I turned the truck off, I deflated in my seat and realized I'd been holding my breath ever since I left the parking lot after school. I sighed again, something I'd been doing a lot of lately, and looked at the front of my house. Just that morning I'd been dark, gloomy, a wreck. When I'd left the house I'd climbed in the truck, dreading what I'd find when I reached my destination, but now I was calm. Somewhat. No, I really wasn't calm just yet. An aftermath of my encounter with Alice still throbbed in my chest, I was still shaking like I'd just got off a roller coaster (or the Volvo). It was like disbelief.

A far off bird trilled, its muted call echoing forlornly through the pane of glass I looked through. It was quiet for a few more moments, the echoes rippling and the trees whispering, as I just sat to catch my breath for a just minute more. And I thought to myself, _this_ was wildlife. The eerie, peaceful silences that don't betray the wilderness lurking under leaves. There's no way to penetrate it.

In a way, Alice was that wilderness. She was a part of it, she was one of them. But then she was more human than anything, able to speak and listen and understand and _compromise_. Nature would never compromise, never yield or buckle just for my sake. Nature was fierce and proud, it wouldn't allow itself to be polluted or razed, just for the sake of some girl. But Alice _was_ fierce and proud, and she was sacrificing so much self. Just for me.

My fingers curled around my keys as I closed my eyes, brows knit as I allowed myself to get lost for just one more moment before going inside the house. Alice shouldn't have been wasting her time with me, I wasn't worth it. I was just some _girl_, some weak and silly girl who was only treating her badly.

(And maybe now the tears were coming.)

… She really needed to stop with me, find someone strong enough to give her everything. And oh, how I wanted to, and oh, how I tried so hard. But I was weak and cowardly and putting this incredible creature through hell. No, I wasn't worth it, not worth _anyone's_ time or love or effort. I was just a human, just a cheater, just indecisive and, well… weak.

Weak can't handle strong, plain can't handle beautiful. That's just how nature works. But oh, how it wants its exceptions.

_Stop crying in the ocean,  
stop crying over me.  
__Stop worrying over nothing,  
stop worrying over me.  
_

* * *

**_Tuesday_**

When we drive, the tension is gone. There's no one in the truck but Alice and I, and even our insecure selves melt. So do the unspoken rules. It's so much like… well, I can't bring myself to acknowledge that it's perfect as though we're _together_, because that would instill in me such a raw, all-consuming, delirious hopefulness.

And that may or may not be a bad thing.

We reach the fork in the narrow road where I would hang a right to reach my house, but Alice squeezes my hand.

"Wait," she says, her eyes curiously alight. So I roll to a stop, waiting for her to go on.

"Do you…" she begins thoughtfully. "Do you want to go somewhere?" I open my mouth to foolishly blurt out _yes, anywhere with you_, but she says "I want to show you something." And I nod, intrigued and trusting and maybe slightly charmed.

When I get out of the driver's seat it's not like the grudging sacrifice of letting Edward drive and just have his way. Alice wants to take me somewhere, and how fast or slow she wants to go I don't know. We cross each other in front of the headlights – the light fog in yellow light so strange – and for a split second it's _so_ surreal, like a dance. For a split second there's _no_ seconds, as time is a standstill, and before these two ships can pass in the night and we finish switching seats of the truck… The mist must cause it, the snag, because Alice and I look at each other strangely, almost foreignly, and she reaches out with impulsive speed I almost can't follow, takes my hand, and pulls me close. I finish the distance and find her mouth. I wanted this so bad. It's like that cavity she mentioned.

We stand alone at the fork in the road and we kiss.

* * *

**_Monday_**

I laid in my bed like usual, my usual nighttime lethargy. My lying, thinking… waiting? It was like I was waiting for something, and I knew what (who) that something would be, but even though the window was unlatched I really didn't want that something (someone) to come. Or maybe I did. Maybe I did want to be rescued from my comatose routine of lying still and thinking dark, writhing thoughts, but maybe I didn't want that rescue in the form of invasion. Maybe I wanted to be whisked away somewhere with sun and motion, not just set upon slowly _still_ in this bed like fog rolling in. I so hated the nighttime sitting quietly in my room, the way the ritual was. It always had to be gray and whispered and night.

There came a light tap on the windowpane and I didn't have to look up to know what I would see there. Before I could even swing my legs over the edge of the bed, before I could move and unglue myself from the quilt and go through the motions of politeness and inviting him in, Edward opened the window and crawled inside anyway.

"Come in," I said stupidly, automatically, as he straightened up. He must have pretended not to hear.

"Hello," he said softly as he dropped into my rocking chair liquidly, his long limbs folding like cloth under his dark jacket and jeans. For some reason I preferred that he sat several feet away, not uncomfortably close to me on the bed. This way, I could watch him and hear him from a better eye. Though, the setup was strange. I lay there and he sat by me; it was like I was being visited at the hospital. Suddenly, I longed again to be anywhere but so still and captive in my room.

"You seem tense," Edward murmured, hardly opening his mouth or moving his lips as was his way when he was speaking softly. Then – I knew it was coming – he crossed to the bed and perched on the edge. And, automatically, I sat up for him. He put his hands on my shoulders and rubbed rhythmically and I closed my eyes to just smell his subtle, earthy, potpourri scent. We didn't speak much. We usually communicated with strange, quiet touches.

But tonight I didn't really want to run my finger up his cheek, ask him nonsense questions about our future. Hell, I didn't want it to be tonight, or Saturday night, or tomorrow night, or night in general. I didn't want to feel like we were just biding our time and talking quietly in a spider web. I wanted to laugh and I even tried to force it to bubble, but of course it didn't work. There was nothing funny.

"I guess I am," I finally said, truthfully, after a long pause. The words escaped somewhat strenuously, like pulling a stray thread from a sweater (a faded sweater… like Edward?). He continued to massage my shoulders and back, hitting and relieving every knot perfectly until I could hardly sit up straight anymore. I was exhausted, and I sort of leaned back and draped myself across Edward's lap.

"I'm so tired," I mumbled, the back of my hand resting across my brow as I breathed deep. Edward stroked my hair curiously.

"I know," he said. "Oh Bella, how I wish I knew what's weighing so heavily on your mind."

And my lips fluttered. "You will," I said, not meaning to say the words. Because that meant… that meant that I would end up telling him. No, _we_ would end up telling him. Because we…

Was that what I wanted?

"Does it have something to do with Alice?" Edward pressed gently, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Hmmm," I breathed. "Edward, don't worry. It's nothing." That was a lie.

"You know you can tell me anything." _Not this_. But his golden eyes, furrowed and probing, bored into me. He just wanted to help, really. _Really?_ Or did he just want to know?

"I'm worried," he went on. "You've both been acting strangely lately, and honestly it's beginning to bother me that you both must be so mysterious."

"You don't need to know everything," I said quietly. It was the wrong thing to say in so many ways. I could have lied just to assuage his worries, to make him feel that nothing was wrong, but I basically just admitted that something _was_ going on. I held my breath.

Edward was silent. After a few moments, he gently moved me off his lap and set my head down on the quilt, and turned his torso so that he rested beside me. We lay like that for some time, our heads down at the foot of the bed, Edward looking down at my hand thoughtfully as he toyed with my fingers, until I slipped off to sleep.

* * *

**_Tuesday_**

"Where are you taking me?" I look out the windows quizzically as row after row of tall trees fly by.

"Oh, you'll see," Alice says slyly, a smile creeping up her lips. She gazes out at the road.

"You're not going to kill me, are you?"

This is the part where Edward's head would whip around and he would look at me in searing disbelief. So sensitive, so serious. But Alice, however, quirks an eyebrow. "You've already made the first mistake by getting in the truck with me. Didn't that movie last Friday teach you anything?"

"I don't remember it very well," I confess, blushing and grinning slightly. "Not after what happened… after." And now my cheeks are furiously crimson, but hot in a good way. A giggle escapes me.

"Well, you're pretty much screwed." And when Alice grins at me wickedly, a pang shoots through my heart. It's like fear, like that ridiculously irrational dream I'd had when I imagined Alice drenched in my blood. For a split second I can really believe Alice is going to jump me, slit my throat like paper, and my heart pounds. But the notion disappears in a matter of seconds.

"I can hear your heart beating from here," Alice says quietly, eyelids fluttering while she watches the road. "I know I shouldn't enjoy it, but… it does things to me."

Then she looks over at me, and her face immediately splits in a grin. She takes in my foolish smile, my fidgeting, my blush and my heartbeat and probably my scent too. And she reaches up to her mouth to scratch her lower lip thoughtfully. "You get all of my senses going at once," she says curiously. "You're so human, Bella, it's incredible."

My heart races all the more and I smile wider, marveling at the things she says and at the way I feel like she must be driving me to heaven.

* * *

**_Monday_**

My eyes opened ever so slightly but I couldn't see anything. Just the formless forms and shapes of furniture… my desk and lamp and rocking chair. It was nighttime, what time was it? I breathed dizzily and drifted back off, Edward's long arms tight around my stomach.

* * *

**_Tuesday_**

No one is ever totally prepared for nature. I'm sure of it, as Alice leads me through a shallow expanse of trees, murmuring "_come on_"s and "_you'll see_"s. She pulls me into a clearing, cold hand curled limp and white in my fingers, and no, I think vaguely that no one can ever be totally prepared for nature. For the simple perplexity of the trees overhanging the clearing filters the sun so spottily that the contrast between the shade and light dappled is like holes in a church ceiling. And I can see the shafts of light like slanted columns, it's so contrasted, and it's like a white-yellow criss-crossed spiderweb… Nothing like the spiderweb of my bedroom, not at all. _This_ is what I wanted, that something-anything-at-all-besides-here that had ached as I vegetated on my bed. And now here I am, taking two steps forward with every nerve alight from just _watching_. For some odd, inexplicable reason, the sight leaves me breathless. No, I can never be totally prepared for it.

I can feel Alice's presence just behind me as she moves in slightly, carefully, observing my reaction. "What do you think?" she whispers. No, I can never be totally prepared for her.

My throat comes unglued. "How did you find this?" I rasp, eyes still on the sunbeams before me.

"I just explore a lot," she replies simply, shyly, smiling guilelessly and swinging her arms gently. I grin at this bashful picture of Alice.

"It's beautiful," I say slowly, still incredulous. And my legs pull me forward, into the clearing, and automatically my hand reaches out to touch one of the taut sun ropes. It passes through. I drift a bit further, immersed in the weaving light, hypnotized.

"Bella," I hear Alice breathe from behind me, her voice barely a whisper. "If you could see yourself…" I look back, and her expression is curious, dreamy, as she observes the contrast of the sun and shadow passing across my skin. And I think of something else.

I go to Alice and take her hands in mine, walking backwards and pulling her along. She smiles at me modestly as she trails along, knowing what I want to see, and steps into the calico sun.

A strip of her arm glitters like diamond, where her slender wrist and forearm are exposed. And her neck, there, like a pearly scarf. And a stripe of her face, one eye, sparkling, the rest in shadow. She moves slightly and the diamond pattern shifts elusively, like paint on her skin with a mind of its own.

Were I to tell her how beautiful she looks right now, how beautiful she _is_, I would be too embarrassed. Instead, I stand… breathtaken. No, I can never be totally prepared for her.

"The way you take me places," I murmur, the disjointed statement falling from my lips of its own accord, as I smile at Alice. "I like it. I love this." I'm not entirely sure of the meaning of my words, but I think it has something to do with getting away, out of my room. Refreshingly. With her.

She knows what I mean yet again, I can tell in her eyes when she moves forward and smiles at me with her eyes like I'm _something_, but this time it's not realizing a painful truth I don't even want to realize, much less communicate… as it had been when she got me that Saturday. It's just her getting me, knowing what I want without having to try. That's why she led me here today, instead of coming back to my house, to my dry and silent room.

"I know." And when she lets her expression soften into a warm smile, corners of her milky teeth showing, and suddenly I find that our hands are together like seamless velcro… I ask myself _why_ it has to be so hard when it could be so perfect. I'm on the verge of thinking of praying, praying for it all to go away or be okay, but instead I give in to instinct at force myself to forget about Edward and my lies. It happens easily, slipping away, and for just a little while I let it be like it could be if all the world was just me and Alice.

* * *

I climb into the cab of the truck and wait for Alice to enter the seat beside me, but there is an extended pause as I watch her silhouette through the foggy windowpane. She stands very still. I shift, perplexed and about to call out, but she then opens the door and slowly gets in. I watch her expectantly.

"Edward will be there when we get back," she says thoughtfully.

For some reason, though Alice herself is calm, a brick of foreboding settles in my gut. "You saw this?" I ask, swallowing.

She nods placidly. "I don't know what you may have told him, but it's apparently not enough to appease his suspicions because he's going to _test_ you."

"I haven't said anything," I protest immediately, my attention grabbed by this first rather than _being tested_.

"I believe you," Alice says calmly, leaning in towards me, "But you must know that you and I have been acting rather odd lately, and Edward isn't stupid to think that something may be going on." She pauses, looking off thoughtfully again. "Though exactly how deep or _accurate_ his suspicions may lie, I don't know.

I chew my lip, waiting for her to go on.

"But you see, it won't be all that difficult," Alice continues with a sigh, her opaque amber eyes tired. "It's all a matter of theatrics and stomach."

I nod, my thoughts hazy, cautious, and trusting of Alice. "Okay."

* * *

I back into the driveway, holding my breath. As I release the gear shift, Alice takes my hand and gives me a gentle, reassuring smile. I let out the air in my lungs and return her smile weakly. If this really isn't going to be that big of a deal, why am I so nervous? White and clammy? I've been lying to Edward for days, all along really, what's another lie right to his face like a two-faced slap of derision? It's cruel, that's what it's going to be. But no, who's it really cruel to? Edward won't exactly know, won't feel it. But Alice will have the cold, stark slap to the face.

"I'm sorry," I mouth hollowly, looking at my lap.

Alice waits for me to look into her eyes. "You do what you have to," she says simply, shrugging. "And I forgive you." With that, and with one last small smile, she gets out of the truck. I follow suit.

Edward is there as soon as I unlock and open the door. Even though I knew he would be there, it still makes me jump a bit to see him there leaning against the counter stiffly, gripping it with his white knuckles, as soon as I open the door.

"Sorry," he says quickly when he notices me jump, like he's getting it out of the way, and I note that though he doesn't look _angry_, there's something in his eyes that immediately puts me on edge.

_In the door and you're there and you're sorry for the fright.  
In the door can I hear you saying you don't want to fight._

"Where were you?" he then asks curtly, betraying no emotion.

_Step 1: Don't get defensive._

"Oh, hey Edward," I say with a bright smile as Alice enters after me and shuts the door, mirroring my greeting. "We just took a drive, what are you doing here?" Casual, unassuming.

"Where did you go?" he persists, eyes impassive.

I force a giggle (it burns my throat in protest). "Just around, I don't know. To get out of the house. Is something wrong?"

_Step 2: Disarm him._

"Oh no," Alice whispers loudly, a devilish smile curling up her lips like the licking of impish flames, and she leans into my shoulder. "He's discovered our affair, Bella." It takes ever ounce of my willpower not to shiver at her cool breath on my ear.

Instead, I giggle again. "Oh god, what now?" The two of us chuckle and I punch her arm lightly.

Edward's gaze flickers back between Alice and I, and I can see the wheels turning in his nimble mind. No, surely we wouldn't have the audacity if really… right?

"Edward, you're being strange," Alice sighs lightly, matter-of-factly, as she takes my jacket from me to hang up.

"Thanks," I murmur, forgetting myself and coloring slightly at the cool contact of Alice's fingernails trailing down my arm as she removes my jacket for me. I can't help it; I wonder if it's noticeable.

"I don't know," Edward says shortly as he bites his lip, his brow heavy. "Nevermind it." And again his dark gaze flits between Alice and I. He steps forward towards me, and it's almost menacing for a split second; his height, towering over me, catches me off guard as offensive and awkward. He takes my arms with his hands and, before he leans in, shoots a furtive look at Alice.

_Step 3: Love him._

It's the moment of truth. I close the gap between our lips like nothing is amiss, even smile into his mouth. It's not the awkward, lifeless press of our last kisses. This time I try, actually _try_ even though Alice is on my mind now more than ever. Their lips are the same softness, same coolness, I notice surreally, even though Alice's are smaller, more delicate and responsive. But even though to me it's as hollow as ever, I make myself melt for Edward like I used to. Convincingly. Perhaps it's because behind my closed eyes, I'm pretending it's not him.

It's only a moment or so, however, before we part. Still, I'm sure for all three of us it felt like time had stopped. Baited breath, testing one another all around.

_Step 4: Do that sigh thing._

As I pull back, as Edward's lips and mine break apart like tearing fabric (that damn sweater), I allow a slow leak of air out, a low vibration of my vocal cords, a short sort of groaning sigh… Alice had told me to do it, had pointed out my habit of doing so after a kiss (and how she so loves it, though remembering her say it now is a sharp pang in my chest). I wasn't aware that I even _did_ it, and forcing it is strangely uncomfortable. Just like Alice's sadly wistful expression when she told me to do it for Edward. I hate having to do this in front of her, but well, that's where the acting comes into play. Isn't that what Edward wants, a reaction? It takes all of my willpower, again, to stay steady, to keep from blushing, biting my lip and glancing at Alice, because that's exactly what he's looking for. It seems it's what he's looking for when we part and in a split second he immediately searches my (glazed and guarded) eyes, then looks to Alice. But she merely sighs and grins ruefully (my mind screams in apology but of course she won't hear it) and puts her hand on Edward's shoulder.

"Alright, you two, enough PDA," she chuckles. Her eyes are hollow from behind Edward's back, and instead of hating him I hate myself. He lingers for a moment, then touches my hand, mutters goodbye with (another) fake smile, and leaves.

I stand watching the door for a moment after he's gone, transfixed for no real reason other than being under some kind of spell.

"He's gone," Alice's voice sounds behind me. I hadn't even thought of him lingering behind to eavesdrop all the more; it hadn't occurred to me to distrust him so. But now, it seems realistic. I feel like I'm going to be sick, from the whole thing.

"Okay," I mutter, turning around slowly and walking towards the counter to give myself something, _any_ kind of motion, my arms crossed and massaging one of my temples with my right hand. Alice is silent. The whole scenario has blanketed us in solemnity, the kitchen stuffy and slightly suffocating.

"I hate this," Alice says quietly. I turn my head to look at her and she's perched on the kitchen table, staring at the floor and biting a hangnail. I just nod dumbly and massage my arms as though I'm cold, even though it's uncomfortably hot in here. Unlike the calm, cool sting of fresh air out in the forest. I long to go back.

"Bella," Alice murmurs.

"Hm?"

She tilts her head as she surveys my insecure posture, the way I'm shaking. _I'm shaking? When did that start?_ "I can't do that again," she admits in a low, sober voice. And this time _I_ get _her_, I understand her meaning in so little words. And I completely agree, neither can I go through that charade again. Not with the way it affects us both after. The episode with Edward was draining.

And also I understand the ultimatum behind her words, and for some strange reason it doesn't startle me, frighten me. It had to come down to this, I know, though it had only struck me in the past thirty seconds or so. I'd been trying to avoid it for days, hoping naively that I could have the best of both worlds.

"Yeah," I say hoarsely, "I know." There's a short silence, and the heat (probably imagined) is positively oppressive. Like the awful feeling in my chest like I'm the tiniest, weakest, loneliest organism on earth. "Can you come here?" I ask in a small voice. Alice comes forward slowly, her eyes heavy and somber, all I want to see right now. _The way she takes me places…_

When she's close enough, I put my arms around her and rest my head on her shoulder, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply. She smells sweet, like old roses pressed in a book or something like that, and her cool body temperature permeates my anxiety. I'm too tired to cry; instead I just stand there in the kitchen embracing Alice, her slender arms curled tight around my waist. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to choose. I don't know whose heart to break.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Author's Note:** Bet you thought I gave up on this, didn't you? I couldn't do that to you. That would be horrible and cruel. I'm not like that. Anyway, just a couple things before you read the last chapter (or, by all means, skip my A/N and get to what you really clicked for). First, I forgot to mention in chapter 4 that the hidden Tegan and Sara quote in chapter 3 was "You think I got my way", from the song We Didn't Do It. It was found by obnubilado, and so in dedication I wrote a oneshot. It's called Acid, you should check it out. Second, I really want to thank everyone who read this story and especially those who left reviews. All the encouragement is what kept me going_. _You guys were/are great, this is the longest story I've ever written (to date), and I didn't think I could do it, but you stuck with me. A special thanks to those who messaged me, the ones who I bounced ideas off. Muchos gracias. Anyway, enough of me going on and on and on. I know you want to read the ending. Don't forget to leave me feedback. :)  
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* * *

  
_

**_Tuesday_**

I shut myself up in my room that night, lying still and thoughtful on top of my bed as the glow of the standing lamp in the corner painted the space a dull orange. I thought to myself, what would Edward do? What would Bella do? Edward, Bella? Those hours of thought, lying in the dark and letting limbs grow stiff. It was a habit they'd both grown into, drowsing around alone, lost in thought. In Bella's case, waiting for someone to maybe come through her window. In Edward's case, waiting to decide if he would. And I thought, if I were Edward, why wouldn't I go every single night? And I thought, if I were Bella, wouldn't I want him (_no, keep the noun at someone_), _someone _there every single night?

I stretched, still lying flat on my back. The relaxation was welcome, slightly soothing, but just lying like a point in a constellation was unnerving. It prickled me, knowing how the three of us just lay separately thinking of one another. It made me restless, longing to creep out and see Bella. It was déjà vu to the weekend, when the wound was still fresh and I paced around disoriented, wondering what Bella was thinking and loathing that it could have, would have been Edward. Again, I wanted to go to her and sway her mind. The last time, I'd stayed myself. _Let her think_, I'd told myself. _Let yourself cool, simmer down,_ I'd thought.

But that thought process – the night after Bella first kissed me, the night after the argument and the intricacy of our relationship was like thorns – was also full of Edward. Guilt, maybe, unwillingness to trespass on his territory (I winced at the ferality, possessiveness of the thought), or doubt that he might not still be between Bella's ears, that he could thwart me and hurt me even just in spirit.

Tonight I didn't want to think that. No, tonight I still wanted to go to Bella, wanted to go convince her to love me, want me, whatever it was, maybe just convince her to tell me I still had a chance. I sat up, my dark sweater riding up my side. Was it fair to Edward, to sneak out and try to improve my chances while he lay unaware that there was even a threat to him? (But for one thing, he _did_ suspect, and for another Bella was not a trophy). I got to my feet, grimacing. I was sick of being the ghost, the underdog. All's fair in love and war, and besides; Edward already had an advantage in being the boyfriend. The title itself was like protection.

No, I was going. I was definitely going.

Out on the lawn, heading to the fringe of trees, I chanced a look back at the tall house looming, half of its windows pale yellow with dim light. A pang of remorse gripped me, for my brother. It was unfortunate things had to come to this.

I turned back, crouching, and began to lope through the forest.

* * *

**_Wednesday_**

The Volvo rolls into the parking lot and I realize just what my life has become. My life is school. My life is monotony. I'm a _vampire_ for god's sake, and here I am in Forks, Washington. And as I get out of the car, watching Edward walk away as I shut the door, I think for the first time what I'm doing here. What keeps me here, besides my family. It's just that girl, isn't it? All it is that keeps me here, all that keeps me _alive_ here in this cold (good) place that's as lifeless as we are… It's her. I didn't know it until now. A chill runs through me, and I shiver a rattling breath. I look around, and I see that her truck isn't there. The late bell rings, and I jog into the school.

* * *

**_Tuesday_**

Running through the trees, breaking through into Bella's lawn, swiftly scaling the tree beside her window, I felt unlike myself. Perhaps it was the spontaneity of the action, the snap decision to come here, that was sort of… leaving the house so fast that I left myself lying there on the bed. And who was I now? Was I Edward? It felt so. This was his ritual, his climb to the window. It was what he did, and now I was doing it. Whatever happened to the front door, the relief I felt at calling on Bella like a human?

This was different.

I slowly hoisted myself to Bella's window, no breath moving in my lungs. Staying frozen a moment, with only the top of my head peering over the sill, I allowed myself a view of her room. Of her.

She was asleep. The bedside lamp was still on, casting a dim orange glow about the space that didn't quite reach the corners of the room. Her face was illuminated, brow creased from lightly troubled thoughts that she must have drifted off with, but other than that she seemed peaceful. Her chest rose and fell, her fingers twined together on her stomach. A pencil sat beside her on the bed. She was still in the same clothes that I saw her in earlier today.

I tore my gaze away and looked down, around, at the ground below me. What time was it? Midnight? Later than that? Though Bella was asleep and couldn't see me, I slowly ducked my head down below the window. I gulped and wondered what I was doing here.

Wasn't it obvious what I was doing there?

I wanted to see Bella. I wanted to crawl in her room, hear and see and feel her smile when she saw me, wrap my arms around her. I wanted to lean in close to her ear and murmur that no matter what she was my best friend, that no matter what I would always care for her. I wanted to lean in close and remember why I was letting myself hurt so much, all for the sake of the way she smelled and felt and laughed so soft and right. Was I hesitating outside her window because she wasn't awake? There could have been more to it, if I was being honest with myself. The crickets chirped loudly far off, and the thick purple blanket of night urged me on while I exhaled.

No, not now. I couldn't. I slipped down from the branches and landed, catlike, in a crouching position. Without looking back I crept away.

…_If I imagine you, body next to another.  
_

_

* * *

  
_

**_Wednesday_**

I'm at her house within five minutes of the lunch bell. I told Edward and the others that I was making up a test; Edward's mouth was tense as he looked at me, but it didn't mean he saw through my lie. Not necessarily. He just looks at me like that lately, knowing that I'm hiding something. I ignore the knot of unease and guilt, remembering myself and what I want. I want to see Bella, as I had last night. It's an itch I have to scratch.

Running as fast as I can, I make it there quickly. She's home, as I thought she would be, her truck in the driveway. Either she's sick or she didn't want to see Edward. Or me. I pause in the driveway, looking at the tall house and swaying on the spot. The apprehension seeps back in, and I wonder why I'm here. But… but of course it's because I can't stay away.

I take just one step and stop again, my breath catching in my chest. For some reason I'm frozen again, and this time I can't even see her through a window or anything. It's just her truck, the white face of her house, but I get to thinking… what if she doesn't want to see me? What if she wants to be left alone? In a lucid motion of déjà vu, I hesitate for the sake of thinking that if I go to her it will ruin everything. If I speak to her, if she sees me… In my head her face falls because she isn't sure.

What is reassuring about the sight of me?

Once more I turn and run home.

* * *

I slow, bounding up the porch steps. For some reason I feel so pale and colorless, as I pause to swivel and look around at the surrounding walls of trees and the patch of gray sky. And I think again on that same path, what is there that is color here in Forks? My eyes, my brother's eyes, the red of blood… and Bella, whenever she's in the frame. Her presence; I think of her red-brown hair and her vibrant smile. I flash back to that clearing, the beams of criss-crossing light dazzling her smooth skin. It is, I realize, as though Bella brings Technicolor to Forks, painting everything and everyone around her (even Edward looks, to me, divine in her color. I wonder what she makes me…).

I blink back to the pale gray and take a deep breath of the cold, pine-smelling air. It stings.

My fingers curl around the handle of the front door, and I pull slightly to let myself in. But as the hinges creak, the sound as red-brown as its rust, my ears prick with rolling black tires on matted gravel.

Bella's truck is pulling up to the house and my brow creases in confusion. My gut drops too, though I don't know why. I don't know if it's dread or that inexplicable swoop of exhilaration I usually get from seeing her; the good kind. I'm just surprised to see her here. My mind snakes and twists, frozen for a moment, as she climbs out of the truck, her brown hair messy and tangled.

"Alice," she calls, walking towards me. She looks like she hasn't slept for days, with dark purple crescents under her eyes and her mouth slack and weary.

"Hi," I say weakly, and of their own volition my lips tug themselves into a small smile. "What are you doing here?" Still I'm standing on the porch with the right side of my body halfway through the door.

Bella walks up the steps of the porch slowly, hands in the pockets of her jeans. "I don't know, I saw you standing in my driveway and then you disappeared."

"Oh." I don't deny it; instead, I just deflate slightly, propped against the door. I hadn't thought about the possibility of having to explain myself.

"What's up?" Bella asks, moving forward. She takes my hand in hers, rubbing her thumb against my skin absently. It's a gesture she's done countless times before, even when all we were was friends, even when there had never been that ambient static between us. I wonder, though, if there was even such a definitive time when that was so, because I can't actually pinpoint it.

"I don't know," I say softly, looking down at Bella's knees in something like shame. "I was going to come see you, but… I guess I had second thoughts." And the reasons I have suddenly seem very foolish. All of it, all of my insecurities, everything, they're foolish once I try to put them into words. They fall flat lamely.

_You drop in for a minute and I'm sorry that I didn't  
Drop in sooner just to see you and see what you've been doing._

Bella frowns, concern lacing the contours of her face. "Why?" She leans her head against the door, staring into my eyes thoughtfully.

I heave a deep sigh. "I don't know. There's just some instinct that tells me to run when I get near you."

Bella bites her lip.

"Because," I continue, "If I do get too close, I could just go and ruin everything."

"Or," Bella whispers, her eyes somber, "I could be the one to ruin you."

It's my turn to bite my lip.

"I don't think I blame you for running," she says sadly.

I shrug. "Well, you've caught up with me now," I say shyly. "Here, why don't you come inside."

* * *

We curl up on the couch, sitting and saying nothing for a good minute or two. I trace circles on Bella's arm, on the fabric of her gray sweatshirt. She just breathes. Finally, the words tracing circles in my head give way to words blurted from my lips.

"So have you been thinking?"

Bella looks up at me, her eyes so tired it pains me.

"I feel strange asking," I say before she can say anything. "It kind of reminds me of how it's forbidden for the defendant to have any contact with the prosecuting attorney before a trial… you know? But I just have to hear what's on your mind. If you'll share it with me."

Bella blinks several times. "Your metaphors always fascinate me." Then a slow smile lights up her face, and I feel warmth circuit through me.

"Yes," she finally admits, after my patient silence. "I have been thinking."

"And…"

"And you need to wait," she says playfully, nudging me in the ribs.

"Why?" I'm trying to keep a lid on my impatience.

Bella pulls a beleaguered face. "It doesn't feel right to tell you anything now," she explains, chewing her lower lip with a worried look on her brow. "Like… like it's unfair or something."

"Yeah," I admit. "I can understand that." For a moment, I stare at the way Bella clasps her hands in her lap, at her long pianist's fingers. And I wonder, in that moment, if this will ever be resolved.

"I know I've got forever," I whisper soberly, before I can stop myself from giving voice to my insecurities, "but I'm not going to wait forever. I just can't." My words eke out with more fragility than I had intended; I hadn't intended to say them in the first place, though.

"I know," Bella murmurs, her head bowed. This is eating her up inside, I know it. And as much as I'm dying for her to choose me, I'm also dying for her to just make the choice period. I want this to end for her. Thinking about what this is putting _her_ through, and forgetting about what it's putting _me_ through… I guess I really feel for her, don't I?

"I just feel…" Bella starts quietly, and I look up and meet her eyes. "I just feel like you're so distant. And I hate to see you this way."

I blink as I look away, trying to think of a way to possibly answer. "Can you blame me?"

Bella shakes her head, leaning in a bit. "No, I don't. But I would think that you'd want to do everything in your power to sway me."

I would think so too. This isn't an omission of action that I can explain, even to myself. I bit my lip, prickling with the awareness that I must seem like I don't want her. But that's not true. Some fear has been holding me back for days. Some fear of stretching so far only to fall.

"I mean," Bella begins, hesitating, her hands twisting together in her lap, "shouldn't you want to fill my head with everything about you, to intoxicate me or something and tip me towards you?"

I close my eyes, sighing like fatigue. Every word she says jitters in my brain like restless fingers, so persistent in their rightness and logic. Why don't I lunge to make her choose me, make her love me, every chance I get? Why did I run away so many times?

It's something like fear that if I reach out she'll end up a mirage, and I don't think I could take that. It's not the fact that the oasis would be false and I would die of thirst; it would be the heartbreak of my hopes of survival swirling away like smoke into nothingness.

"Yes," I whisper with conviction, my eyes slipping open to slits ever so slightly, and without thinking I bend forward and press my mouth to her lips. For some reason the instant contact is a flood of sensory stimulation all at once, like it has been every time we have touched. My mind races with ways to describe it should I ever be obliged to, should I ever write a book about how Bella Swan makes me feel. It's like moving your hand as slowly as possible towards your skin until you can feel your two skins touching though they're not quite, the fine hairs are just reaching towards your fingertips and making you feel like a magnet. It's like some kinds of colors, blossoming like bleeding paint, that would classify the contact much better than adjectives. It's like paper-thin skin covering my lips is panting on its own, making sounds and making movement in my lungs.

What does Bella feel right at this instant, as our lips scrape together precisely and carelessly? I itch to ask, to listen for hours to the reply. But there I am thinking in concrete words again, almost, and for just this moment I want all of that sort of thing to melt away. We think too much. We don't touch like this enough. We don't just _be_ enough.

So I lean in more, feeling the miniscule vibrations in Bella's throat tingle to the tip of my chin, and I put my hand on her knee tentatively and kiss her more deeply.

I don't think I've ever loved the loss of rational thought more than I do now. There are no wonderings and no motives, as Bella pushes against me to feel up the side of my torso and I push back after a moment, to weave the fingers of my left hand into the river of her brown hair. We just move together, and just let this thing happen, and I just lean back as she slowly bends to push me back, and I'm on my back with her on top of me. This couch has never seemed so small.

But exquisitely so.

Absently, without even thinking (because I haven't done so in seven minutes now), I write my name in cursive with my tongue on hers. And she moans, the most fascinating sound I believe I will ever hear (since it ignites such a frightfully superb pressure in my abdomen, and where is the scientific explanation for that?) and breaks away ever so slightly.

"Edward never-" she murmurs, her bottom lip brushing mine with the first syllable of the second word, "-me feel like this." It's a rush of words that leaves me feeling slightly clenched inside, like her breath was hot with sour milk or something.

"Not now," I say hoarsely. "Don't want to talk about him." But still her simple, broken, fragmented sentence has broken some dam that makes everything gush back. My brother is at school while I lie underneath his girlfriend, pulling at her lips with mine and exploring her warm white body with my hands. That's what I'm doing, no matter how like poetry it feels.

"No." I shake my head, hating this. Hating the needling reminders in my head, not what we're doing. I think this was what I was so afraid of; that when I try to make Bella mine I'll bring along a cascade of reasons why this won't work that won't _leave me alone._

Bella puts her lips on mine again; slowly, not with the quickness of clumsy apology. And she brings a hand to touch my face. "I'm sorry," she whispers, mouth hardly moving against mine. "I shouldn't." Then she inhales, her nose drawing in air from right against my skin. "Just please understand how I'm not free of him.

Yet."

_In flash back to you, just brought attention to the mess.  
__In a flash you're on top, begging me to understand.  
When I imagine you, body next to another._

And in that instance of that hardly pronounced _yet_, like a dart piercing my skin with its implications, the present is sucked away in the fraction of a second.

_I see the kaleidoscope of trees whipping by at an impossible speed that could mean only one thing, and a tall white house looming quickly. The lanky boy with copper-colored hair strides past the rusty red truck and bounds up the porch steps, his face rigid with iron-tight focus. The door is wrenched open in his long white hand._

But this vision wasn't a conspicuous shudder or a jerk to and from reality, and Bella didn't notice my absence from the world for a few moments, and when I return her lips are already on mine again, and when I gasp it happens to be at the very moment that she skates her fingers under my thin shirt and makes contact with my cold skin, so neither of us has really stopped. But it's like the vision hasn't stopped, either, because a moment after the door is opened in my mind, I hear it slam in my ears.

For some reason, the only thought that registers in this split second is dull wonder at the way my vision is working in such a curious way to be of no help to me at all.

All of a sudden Edward is there in the room, standing, swaying on the spot, looking at the kiss and the contact between his girlfriend and his sister on his living room couch. His fists are clenched and his mouth is clamped like a bear trap, his eyes blazing a color I can't place.

Bella sees him almost instantly, and she brings her face from mine jerkily, color flooding from her aghast expression.

For some reason, the only thought that registers in this split second is the fascination at the workings of blood in the human body.

"I knew it," Edward growls. If he knew it, he's doing a poor job of showing it because his blistering anger should have been reconciled with by now if he really did know it.

But wait. This is really happening. The horror of being caught like this stampedes the ridiculous haze of flip observation in my mind. My mouth goes dry.

Bella scrambles off me and gets to her feet, looking at the floor while her face slowly turns crimson. I bend my knees and stand too, and the three of us are rooted there in a standoff for several moments of silence. Waiting for someone to say something.

"Edward," Bella says finally, breaking the silence as she takes several tentative steps towards him. "Please let me explain."

"What's there to explain?" he states in a dry, flat voice.

"Just listen to me!" Bella shouts, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead in distress. I stand quite still, my mouth a thin line, as my quick eyes dart back and forth between the boy and the girl. I hope this will all flare and die without me being dragged into it, but I know I'm a fool to think I can remain unnoticed for more than just a few seconds.

"I never wanted to…" Bella begins her excuse weakly, with a cliché opener, but her voice breaks and the sentence trails off as Edward's nostrils flare dangerously. Her mouth opens once and then closes, at the same time as my eyes (something terribly climactic and terrible is coming, and I don't need a vision to tell me), and then she clears her throat and looks Edward dead in the eyes.

"Edward, I fell in love with Alice."

I find myself shocked that she said it so plainly, without waffling and crying, like I had known so surely she would handle this when – or if – it came. I find myself shocked that she said it at all. That there's a chance she could mean it. My heart sinks and leaps at the same time, for the sake of my brother and of myself, and the two separate motions seem to make it bunch and tear. I heave a huge breath, like I actually need oxygen, and another. My hand itches to seek out Bella's, but I know it wouldn't be appropriate right now. And she stands just a bit too far from me.

Edward does not blink. "Did you?" But it's not a question.

"Yes," Bella says assertively, albeit breathlessly. Her conviction before Edward astonishes me, and makes my chest swell with pride for her. "I'm sorry to hurt you like this, but I couldn't help it. I can't help what I feel. I know what I _can_ help are my actions, and my actions are what I chose, but I can't treat this like a mistake."

She pauses, taking her lower lip between her teeth. "I'm sorry. But I love her."

With this, she shoots a hesitant glance at me, then crosses a few feet to where I stand and takes my cold hand in her sweating one. I thread my fingers in hers and squeeze reassuringly. If Bella's been so brave, then I need to be.

"Edward." I say his name quietly, deliberately, needing him to look up from the carpet into my eyes. When he does, face grim and unreadable, I draw a shallow breath.

"I understand if you never forgive me," I tell him. "I could have stopped at any time, but I didn't." I feel as though there is more to say, but for now this is all I will say. I won't tell him that I am not a thief and that this was his girlfriend's conscious choice (it still makes my head spin thinking that the choice _has_ been made, for me); these and other details aren't needed, and after all he is my brother. Apology is all he needs to hear, and all I need to offer in its simplicity.

"Well," Edward says after a few moments. "I suppose it's my turn to say something." I graze the interior of my arm against Bella's, for the reassuring feel of her skin, and give her hand another squeeze.

He inhales. "For the past couple of weeks I've thought you were hiding something from me. And I guessed it might be…" He gestures hastily at Bella and I. "…_this_. But I didn't want it to be. I didn't want to think it, even though the suspicion nagged at me. I couldn't bear the thought. And now this." There is a break in his speech as he closes his eyes and massages the spot between his eyebrows. "I don't understand. I don't understand how you could do this to me. The both of you. And the improbability of the entire situation still astounds me, the fact that this could actually _happen_."

"Same here," I whisper, to myself, but Edward ignores me.

"Isn't that life though," he continues, looking up to the ceiling and laughing bitterly. He then looks back at Bella, jaw clenched tight. "I assume that you and I are finished?"

She gulps, and I can almost feel the motion run through my bones like a shiver. "Yes," she says, and I can just barely pick up the hint of fear in her voice. It makes my stomach swoop with sympathy.

Edward steps closer until he is very close to Bella (and I), looking down at her. "I value what we had together, though you threw it all away. You made your choice… and I respect you for having such _conviction _in doing so."

"And I," Bella blurts, "respect you for being such a _gracious_ loser."

Edward stiffens, his nostrils flaring as he heaves a heavy breath. "Thank you," he hisses. "Though I must say you deserve so much more respect as you're so bravely coming out of the closet."

Bella merely glares at him, her lower lip trembling. This onslaught is too much for her, I know it. She may be strong, and that's what I love about her _(love?), _but she's delicate too and it's only a matter of time before she crumbles. My poor girl.

As though he has realized what he's said (but is too proud to take it back), Edward steps back. "I'm going to leave now," he says curtly, walking towards the door. He turns back once to look at us. "I hope you're happy." And though he spits the last sentence with bitterness, I feel a weight lift off my chest. It's the fact that nothing had come to screaming. It's the fact that perhaps, I can get my brother to forgive me someday. It's the fact that the _ordeal_ is over. It's the fact that Bella… Bella is mine. She loves me. It must be true, she said it aloud.

From beside me, there comes a small choke. I look to Bella to find two tears running from closed eyes.

"Fuck," she whispers, her voice breaking.

I bring our clasped hands to my mouth, and kiss Bella's knuckles. "Shhhh," I murmur. "Come here." And I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her close, inhaling her scent and letting her head rest on my shoulder.

"You were so brave," I murmur into the gray fabric of her sweatshirt as she cries on my shoulder and clutches my back. "You were so, so brave. I'm so proud of you."

"I couldn't have done it," she says thickly, "if I didn't have you here. If I didn't have you, period."

I rub my hand in circles on her back, just letting her cry it all out. Her body is so slight and so soft, moving in sorrow against mine, and still I shudder at the feel of her. So warm and alive. And this girl loves me. _Me_. I pull back, holding on to her arms, to look in her eyes.

"Do you really love me?" I ask hoarsely, tentatively. Old habits of insecurity die hard.

Bella bites her lip, then nods slowly. A small smile tugs at her lips. "There's the way you're beautiful, and the way it's really struck me lately. There's the way I became so attracted to you so suddenly. There's the way you make me calm, and the way you turn me on, and the way you make my heart pound. There's the way you're my best friend. There's the way I would trust you with my life, and the way I _have_. There's the way I want to touch you all the time. And the way I want to be with you all the time."

She pauses, breath hitching.

"I think, all put together, that makes me love you."

Then, every so slowly, she brings her lips to mine. I let my disbelief and my euphoria and my everything all at once wash over me, I let the feel of her touch thrill me just as it had the very first time, I let my limbs go loose and limp.

I love her too.

I pull my lips away from her and say so.


End file.
